


Becoming: A Prequel

by sonicmom



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Origin Story, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Amnesia, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Angst and Humor, Bad Weather, Bullying, Canon-Typical Violence, Companions, Dark Academia, Denial of Feelings, Enemies to Friends, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Fake Science, False Accusations, False Memories, Found Family, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Howard Stark's Bad Parenting, Human Experimentation, Hurt Peter Parker, I know civil war was horrific but it's going to happen again, M/M, Memory Loss, Oblivious Tony Stark, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Peter Parker Needs a Break, Peter Parker has Organic Web Shooters, Science Bros, Secrets, Serious Injuries, Slow Burn, Sometimes Fluff, Tony Stark Still Has Arc Reactor, i'm talking the slowest of burns, they have superpowers! in school!, this fic has a complex similar to civil war, when they aren't fighting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:21:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21542170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonicmom/pseuds/sonicmom
Summary: “Being like everyone else, especiallyhere, is the biggest drag you could ever wish upon yourself."“Says you.” Peter extended an explaining hand. “You’re… You'reTony Stark. You’re set to inherit thebiggesttech company in the world. Your father—"“Turned me into a cyborg,” Tony said directly, eyes wide but simple. “He turned me into acyborg. IntoR2-D2.”Peter put his hand down awkwardly. “C-3PO,actually,” he muttered, “would be more appropriate.”And then there went Tony's odd look.—Tony Stark, previously hospitalised, returns to his boarding school with a blue device in his heart. New student Steve Rogers has strength only attained through amnesiac outbursts, and sophomore Peter Parker finds himself pained with spider-like abilities. When Tony decides to help them (and find out more about his own potential), he realises he needs assistance. Old friend Bruce Banner would be perfect. Too bad he hates him.But that's the least of Tony's worries; Clint Barton and Bucky Barnes want blood spilled at that school for two separate reasons. From the way things are looking, it might be his.He better find that potential fast.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, Peter Parker & Steve Rogers, Peter Parker & Steve Rogers & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Kudos: 27





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve noticed that there is an extreme lack of fics focusing on the Avengers attending boarding school while having superpowers. I decided to do something about that!
> 
> I had a couple points of inspiration: gritty superhero prequels, and my love for dark academic settings. In the end, I decided to put the two together, and it led me to explore how life would’ve panned out if the Avengers found their powers while still being in school.
> 
> This story is a loose re-imagining of canon and will go all over the place. All superpowers have been either reinterpreted or made somewhat plausible (eg. physical restrictions, no magic) and more will be explained as the chapters go on. I’ve left tags open because this story is an absolute journey, and more characters and tags are to be added as they become relevant. Some spoilers have not been tagged, for the (obvious) sake of spoilers.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

_________

**_ACT I_ **

_________

_To Mister Coulson,_

_I trust you are well._

_Thank you for your response; your proposal of negotiation has been considered._

_My son’s mistreatment from his peers—concluding in pertinent injury—was an evident prompt towards my taking of legal action. I’m sure you can empathise as to why._

_In review of your preceding offer, however, there has since been meditation._

_Please send your rebut in official writing. We can, surely, come to an agreement._

_Howard Stark._

~ ~ ~

Tony Stark, previously hospitalised, returned to his school under the bleak grey of an odd Monday.

When his father’s Bentley pulled into the rounded mouth of its entrance—and the classic, _heaven-reaching_ spires of the baronial architecture came into approximate view—Tony dispersed his focus into his lap, blinked.

It was a matter of him being frightened, and he knew it. He refused to look up at that which scrutinised down at him. He denied the buildings that sounded back to him his choking at the foot of Clint Barton’s unjustified wrath, and wouldn’t let them penetrate him with the memory. Tony’s eyes, instead, raced about his pant thighs in quick calculation, in which he tried to put the pieces together.

Tried to understand _why_ he wore the uniform again, _why_ he had his bags in the trunk, _why_ he sat parallel to the face of his school. As expected, the pieces didn’t fit. 

After everything that had happened, he couldn’t possibly comprehend why he was back.

A month or so prior, Clint Barton left Tony for dead on the concrete of their school. He had delivered the hit to him fresh, put his foot straight in the balloon of Tony's stomach and _popped_ it; punctured through the skin and pulped the muscle, halted his blood. And then Tony lay there, dead almost, with the patter of rain drowning out his ability to discern time, space, _help._ They ran.

It was depraved, but Clint was satisfied.

_Tony took the blow, swallowed it and let it cease him. It was the right spot for Clint, and the absolute wrong for him._

The period before rehabilitation was difficult for Tony to recall, but he did remember a few things:

The nurses, who obscured the passing lights of the hospital’s ceiling as they spoke him awake, tried to hook his fleeting consciousness as they wheeled him to immediate medical help.

His mother Maria, who gripped his wired fingers with her soft, sorry hands, let the vagueness of rose perfume drift off her cheek and onto his.

Howard, who sat at his bedside only once, with dry eyes and a firm hold on his forearm. No emotion. No tears.

Tony then remembered, fleetingly, the debriefing from surgeons that was horrendously non-penetrative in all his haze. He remembered the masked faces, boxed in by two mattes of drooping eyelids, almost as though the whole thing was cinematic and unbelievable. And then slowly, slowly, _slowly_ , the surgical masks became enclosed between the black as he withered into galaxies.

He slept for some time.

When Tony awoke, he found his chest compressed tight beneath wide bandages, and the small skin of his heart seared open around a flat blue bulb. Post-sedation, his frail fingers felt the glass face embedded within him, and a pool of dull luminescence shone through his touch, lit his blood faintly purple.

From that moment on, Tony knew his heart was gone. Something inorganic, instead, was in its place.

Something _unreal_ , but still whirring.

“Would you like me to escort you inside?” Tony’s driver asked, turned around frailly to face him seated at the back of the car.

Tony’s hands were interwoven, shaking in consideration at the hang of his spread legs. He flicked his contemplative gaze up. “Spare me the further eyes, Jarvis.”

“Oh, it’s not _that_ bad, Tony.”

“See, _I_ know that,” he then said, unfastened his seatbelt, “but something tells me my opinion differs to everyone else's.”

Jarvis examined the blue circle glowing dimly from underneath Tony’s shirt. “You’re expecting a few people to, if you will, _lose their cool?”_

Tony's hand lingered on the interior handle of the car door. “A few is more than two right?”

He stepped out of the right of the Bentley, closest to the front of his school’s entrance, and felt immediately the loom of the mammoth building all old and stoney. Tony looked up at it and huffed. Retreating to the trunk, which Jarvis popped in compliance to the small thump he gave the car’s rear, he took his belongings.

Tony took the blazer he had laid atop his luggage and struggled immensely against the obscure tightness that came with putting it on. The stretching of muscle around his altered chest felt odd, almost tugged at an invisible seam Tony would freeze at so as not to rip something. Deprived of a tie, he wore his backpack, ensured the sternum strap of it was closed and clipped over the protruding globe underneath his shirt. It didn’t hide much of it, no further than the cloth of his shirt already did. It was more, however, in preliminary precaution of any wandering eyes, any questions.

Tony wasn't ashamed of what they did to him. Hell, the surgery saved his _life_.

For his own sake, it was just _too_ early in the day to begin the inevitable, never-ending, walking panel of speculation that came with what that meant. At least after settling back into his dorm he’d feel more ready to relay the same dismissive, monotonous answer he had prepared for them all. _Just a fancy pacer. Move along._

Holding a leather bag he had Jarvis retrieve from Stark Tower, Tony moved towards the car’s passenger seat. He leaned into the opened window, addressed his driver whose face was stuck in a sour meditation. “Cheer up, Jarvis,” he said. "I could _hear_ you complaining about me to Maria while I was under. If anything, I’m giving you a break.”

“It was reminiscence,” Jarvis said earnestly. “Just reminding ourselves of the good and the bad of you. The good, mainly.” He shifted. "Well, I suppose everything’s a good memory when—"

“When you’re lying in a hospital bed with no hope?”

Jarvis pursed his lips. “There was definitely hope, Tony.”

He eyed Jarvis intently, put an arm on the window of the car door. “I’m going to be okay.”

“If you need any of us, Mr. Stark, you _must_ call.”

Tony shook an agreeing, lying finger. “I will."

It was his formality that hid Jarvis' sentiment well, mainly in protection of his own dignity. He had to keep his composure for the sake of his job, but Tony could see he worried; eyebrows all folded together, aged face melting in anxiety.

Tony saluted Jarvis, stood up and out of the window.Needing any of them was an ambitious assumption. While he knew he could depend on his driver, who had been answering to the Starks and himself for a variety of years, his own parents were another story. Needing either of them was a fantasy; impossible. Tony never let it happen.

Regardless, he wouldn’t call.

The car window’s tint rose to separate Jarvis and himself. Then, in the black of its glass was immediately reflected a figure, standing atop the entrance steps. The individual's hands were joined together in waiting, a grey suit donned. It was boxed and terrible, and definitely only something a member of _faculty_ wore. Tony discerned the familiar face, which moved across the dark glass and distorted into the Bentley's paint as it drove off slow, hesitant.

Tony turned finally and ascended the stone stairs of the monstrous, old building.

At the height of the steps, he stopped. “Principal Coulson, it seems a _squashed_ _lawsuit_ was an ample enough bribe to get you out of that surveillance room you call an office.”

Principal Coulson, who stood formally, nodded away the comment with his decorous face. “I wanted to personally make sure your return to school was accommodated for.”

“Did you though?” Tony squinted a questioning eye toward him. “Or was that under the instruction of my father?”

Coulson fidgeted formally. “We're _both_ adamant to ensure your continued education here is safe.”

“Uh _huh_.”

“I trust you recovered well?”

“Something like that.” Tony looked around ineptly, surveyed the near-empty forefront of the school. He waited a good moment before he asked his next question. “When did you expel Barton?"

Coulson breathed in through the nose, prepared his answer. Something told Tony he wouldn’t favour what he was about to hear. “Well, we’re more focused on _reinvention_ as opposed to permanent consequence, now. We’ve put great effort into _reconstructing_ Mr. Barton's character—“

“So, it _really_ wasn’t enough for you to keep one contribution pool to dip your feet in,” Tony deduced, interrupted Coulson’s bullshit. He let his bag down. "One very _ample contribution_ pool. You needed two.”

“Absolutely not, Tony. That isn’t how we looked at it—"

“Save it, Coulson.” Tony’s eyes seared, twitched at his thoughts, and he dimmed his voice. "He almost _killed_ me.”

“I understand this.”

“Do you?"

Coulson firmed his mouth. "There is no reason why we can’t fulfil our aim of protection—our _promise_ —with Barton still in attendance.”

“You wouldn’t have to had he actually been expelled. You seriously expect me to walk around, Clint _still_ here, without fearing he’s going to pull a stunt like that again?”

“We aren’t allowing you to be alone, Tony,” Coulson asserted. "Not anymore.”

“My _ass_.”

“Mr. Stark—"

"With what measures, then?” Tony almost laughed into it. "Regular counselling? A buddy?” At the silence that emerged on Coulson’s end, he pointed his gaze. “Oh, that’s fun. A _buddy_. Which member of faculty did you burden with my companionship?"

Coulson cleared his throat. “We’ve designated you a _pupil_.”

Again, he stifled an incredulous chuckle. “Name a peer jumping at the opportunity to protect me.” Tony outstretched his arms, gesturing to no one. “Maybe Clint knocked the sight out of me too, but I don’t see anyone here."

“We have a new student,” Coulson explained, straightened his jacket, "arriving in a day or so. He’s going to need someone to show him around. I’ve given him your name.”

Tony stared at his principal a moment. “You brought some kid over, from another school, to ensure Barton doesn’t jump me again?"

“I’ve merely decided to refer him to you,” Coulson said sternly. “He enrolled while you were hospitalised, set his arrival date for this week.”

Tony looked elsewhere, breathed a second, shook his head slow. “I’m not taking him on."

“We’re doing this for your wellbeing, Tony. To have someone looking out for you.”

“This wasn’t apart of the deal you struck up with my father."

“Then I _really_ doubt he has explicated it to you in its entirety.”

And at that, Tony was caught. Howard hadn’t explained properly the grounds for the lawsuit’s dismissal—he rarely explained anything to Tony in complete—but he never expected it to end with Clint still in attendance, and a student trailing him in his defence.

Coulson exhaled into a more optimistic demeanour. “With Mr. Barton off your back, we’re hopeful you can put your dispensed energy back into the things that matter. You’re a very intelligent student, Mr. Stark."

In that manner, his principal was right, and Tony knew it. Getting beaten, bruised, _admitted_ had really shot the creativity out of him.

Coulson continued. “In saying that, I wanted—while you were here—to discuss something with you very much aside from your situation with Mr. Barton—"

“I really don’t have the capacity right now to think about programs, or summer courses," Tony interrupted, shivered back into the conversation. He reached down to pick up his bag again. “Or university applications, or _student-inferred donations and endorsements_ , even, with how corrupt they are and all—"

“Let me help you,” Coulson said, gestured toward the bag as well. At the bend of the action, the sternum strap of Tony’s backpack snapped open suddenly, shone the light of the cerulean insertion into Coulson’s view. He stared at it.

Tony quickly gripped his bag again from the ground, stood straight, tried his hardest with one hand to re-clip the strap. Especially atop the bulbous shape of his heart, there was no use. “Dammit.”

“The surgery—"

“It changed some things. Yeah, Coulson, _I know_.” He gestured to the dim glow, looked around impatiently, let his hand glide through his hair. He was overwhelmed. “If you really understood as well as you say you do, Barton wouldn’t still be going here.”

“Tony—"

“I’ll be going to my room, now.”

Tony walked around Coulson, opened the large oak doors behind him, and disappeared at once. He left his principal staring out at the rounded driveway, as lonesome as he must’ve been before Tony had arrived.

On the way up to his dorm, Tony had managed to fit the sternum strap around his heart again.

Something about it all told him he wouldn’t get away with doing that much longer.

~ ~ ~

Later that week, Tony was startled by Steve Rogers.

Against the rain that persisted for the remainder of the days, he had managed to avoid Clint with great efficiency. It was too great, almost, like he had managed to vanish conveniently. Maybe, after everything, it became instinctual for Tony to keep his distance, and going through something as traumatic as he did repelled him from the cause without effort or warrant.

Like someone who had fallen off a building found themselves thrust back, magically, from heights.

_“Time out, Barton,” Tony wheezed, saw the foot pulled back in charge, the course set for his abdomen. “I said time—"_

Nevertheless, Tony wasn’t complaining. He didn’t want to test the limits of his new heart, anyway.

His return to his regular schooling wasn’t spectacular. The academy was still dark, old, concrete-ridden, eerie. The classes were dry. The only thing habitually awake about the school was its students, the newborns of fortune, and even _they_ seemed dredged of animation by conforming to that of the heir air. They didn’t ask Tony of his disappearance, nor why it occurred. Instead, they conversed between themselves about it, forced rumours and gossip through the mill. As a result, Tony continued on with his regular traverse around them, in and out of the elitist flow. Yes, the Starks were wealthy—probably the wealthiest of them all—and Tony definitely looked it. But he wasn’t alike them. The statement proved true: not one of them was a friend.

At his locker, Tony searched for an exercise book for his physics class. He didn’t directly understand _why_ a boarding school possessed such storage, but he used it regardless, didn’t complain at all when it swallowed his trash for him. Except for this instance, where he needed that which had disappeared conveniently.

Failing to find the book, he then slammed the door shut. In its place stood a tall boy.

Blonde, uniformed, broad, holding a book or two, staring down at him. He wasn’t expecting that.

Tony’s heart almost shit itself again.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” he exclaimed, clutched his blue glowing shell.

“Sorry,” the boy said. “I didn’t realise you couldn’t see me behind your—"

“Behind my locker?” Tony rebutted. "In which I’m at least, what, an evident _foot_ shorter than you?”

"It wasn’t my intention to catch you off-guard.”

Tony eyed him a moment. He was a jock-type, a large frame squeezed into a shirt and tight sweater, hair normal. An athletic boy also, almost _too_ athletic for the lack of sporting variety that plagued the brawn attending their school with all that energy and no one to tackle. If that was the case, why he had transferred—if not just to play bodyguard—was an instant anomaly. Maybe it was a parent’s decision on which he had no say. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Tony didn’t really care. “I’m guessing you’re the new kid.”

He extended a hand. “Steve.”

Tony took the gesture and was led into a firm shake. “Tony, but you knew that already.”

“I did happen to, actually.”

“Courtesy of Coulson.”

“Yeah.”

Steve breathed in, planted his hands in his pockets, looked around embarrassingly. New wasn’t something the students around him seemed to ever be. Sure, they had new cars, new toys, uniforms that remained stately new no matter the years that went by. But being _new_ , the act of unfamiliarity and unbelonging, seemed _unfamiliar_ to the crowd in itself. Money and repute could buy placement anywhere, it stood.

Plus, the school was a dead entity. It didn’t do well with new blood.

Tony swung his backpack around to the front of him, fished between the open zipper for his missing book. Steve examined him, noticed something he recognised. “You look very familiar,” he blurted out. “I’ve seen you around before, haven’t I?”

“What, the name didn’t give it away?” Tony looked up at Steve, saw he was unmoved at that. He raised a brow, then contemplated to himself. “Which _Inheritors Monthly_ issue did that exposé on me? June? August?”

“I meant in-person.”

He furrowed his expression. “Probably not, then.”

“Are you sure? Something about your face—"

Then, in sudden revelation, Tony turned around and opened his locker again, cut Steve off by the dividing action. He dug deep into the top shelve, sorted through loose sheets of paper. Steve stood there, lingering awkwardly. This _definitely_ wasn’t an impressionable first meeting.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where Algebra Two is?” He asked, trying for Tony’s attention. "It’s my next class.”

Tony continued to rummage his belongings, without speech, until he pulled out a dark green, feather-edged book.

When he had closed the locker, and his backpack was again positioned behind him, Steve noticed properly the coloured gleam beneath Tony’s white school shirt, outlined by the black of his blazer. He widened his eyes a bit, cleared his throat. “Your, uh, undershirt is showing.”

Tony blanked. “My _what?”_

“Your—” he began, pointed to it, “your _blue_ undershirt.”

Tony grabbed his backpack strap, let his arm cross over his chest. “That’s not an undershirt.”

“Oh.”

“I’m going to tell you where Algebra Two is now, so you'd better write this down.”

He really didn’t have to, but Steve did it anyway. He fidgeted open one of his books, took a short pencil out of his pocket.

“Down the hall, turn right, then left,” Tony instructed. “When you see the columns, turn right again.”

“Thanks.” Steve finished scribbling on the book against his taught leg. "Actually, _maybe_ , I could walk with you—"

When he looked up, Tony had started in the other direction. Left him there.

The thing about Tony having no friends was that he didn’t want any in the first place. After his incident with Clint, that hadn’t changed.

~ ~ ~

Behind the hill, the drizzle of the mid afternoon slimed on Peter's face. He was already embalmed with the sweat of struggle, and the mix of rain water and the chill of the day wasn’t a helpful addition. He looked down at his right wrist, which was bare and hived before his sweater’s pushed-up sleeve.

“Come _on_ , Peter,” he encouraged himself. He strained, compressed his face into folds, tensed the bottom of his forearm. At once, an elaborate webbing protruded from a raised vein within his wrist’s rash.

It was painful. He wailed.

Peter fell forward onto his knees and then into the grass, face-down, unconscious. The last he saw was the school’s embellished structure fly atop him. The soft rain continued on.


	2. Chapter 2

There was more to his heart than Tony had realised.

Seated individually and isolated in his Physics class, something had pulled him out of a daze that penetrated the blur of outpour on a nearby window. The culprit was a conversation succeeding him, a low rumble of murmurs beneath bowed heads engrossed loosely in work. In exact, it was a few interesting words strung together.

“... A new engineering facility.”

Tony looked up, then immediately returned pensive at his own book. He narrowed his eyes in concentration, held his pencil in paused action and let the led balance it. Desperately, he wanted to hear what they had to say.

His school had never been one for technology. The sheer antiquity of the place—regardless of the calibre of families attached—seemed as though it would deter the likes of the _Massachusetts Institute of Technology_ from fishing for alumni, which would definitely be to Tony’s dismay if his repute didn’t already guarantee him a spot.

If their school, however, were forced to favour a science, it was always biological. The stigma of wealthy doctors arising from prestigious academies was, hence, still an outdated statute.

Everyone _outside_ the toxicity of their démodé walls, though, knew the big money was really in engineering.

It had been a week or so since Tony first met Steve. Nothing about the encounter had been particularly inspiring, except in that of creating a plan to filch in and out of classes promptly, quietly, and return to his dorm for the solitude Principal Coulson promised him not. There had been dry greetings—mainly on Tony’s part, as a result of his dismissiveness—and a couple more directives spewed when Steve had inevitably gotten lost. But it was _imperative_ to Tony that he settle back into school alone, and so a lot of evasion occurred thereafter.

It was one particularly lonesome afternoon—much to his favour—where, standing topless ahead the mirror in his disorderly dorm, Tony realised properly the extent of his condition of being.

The soft, unbroken flicker of enclosed blue was seated symmetrically between his rib cage, and showcased a flat face that dissipated whitened teal into small divisions. The idea that he was a teenager with an exposed device lodged in the crook of his chest, at that moment in time, had become less of a consideration to Tony, as rare as it was abnormal.

Instead, it was the glow through the glass that transfixed his thought. Because light—strong, _brilliant_ light—indicated power.

And power was energy.

When he had heard conveniently that talk of an engineering facility, an ample space previously omitted from their school without acceptable reason, he let his conjectures about his heart soar.

Tony stored mentally aspects of what he overheard from those students conversing in class, and it was all quite grand in theory. The facility was a standing building, an old structure at the fore of the school’s turbid pond hidden behind a dividing hill. It came set with modernised equipment and ample space and, that which was most absorbing of the information, a _new_ teacher. According to the prattle, Dr. Fury was mystified and silent, hovered around in a dark coat without so much as eyeing other faculty or students.

And, despite his so-called sightings, they also spoke of him being difficult to locate.

Naturally, if he wanted to use the facility, Tony felt he had to find him.

~ ~ ~

The facility in which Dr. Fury traversed boxes that afternoon was a Victorian standalone. It sat ardently harmonious with the rest of the archaic campus, and Tony was barely surprised at the structure's camouflage. He noticed, preceding it, the lake—a shallow, leaden expanse of weeds and still water—which framed the building’s foreground like two looming hands.

Tony believed the facility resembled a home more so than the other infrastructure, with a portion of its first floor glassed completely as though sporting an attached greenhouse. How it related to the advancement of engineering was dichotomous and ironic, with all the reddish brick, manorial embellishments, snaked ivy on its external. But the facility—which had evidently been built for living or non-scientific ventures—stood and was to stay, regardless of what Tony thought of it. He was thankful for its existence, nevertheless.

Tony had been watching from afar Dr. Fury transfer boxes from the school’s main division to the place for a few hours and decided, after a few more of the same journey, that he wasn’t going to let off the task anytime in the near future. After the black coat disappeared into the facility for a considerable moment, broke its own pattern of back and forth, Tony decided to follow down overgrown cobblestone leading to the entrance and inside.

The facility’s internal was dust and dark colours, clouded mute sun through faded stain-glass, and met Tony with an old staircase as it opened into an expanse of checkered flooring and a mouthed ring of machinery sitting atop it. A barrage of uniform, deep-wood tables sat enclosed within them, and were loomed over by ornate lamps. The farthest wall he could see was the one blanketed in windows, which were frosted dirty in abandonment. A grimed whiteboard interrupted its condensed light.

Tony walked into it all, looked around in a sort of awe. At the echoed sound of his steps, Dr. Fury—who shifted a box onto a nearby bench—turned around.

“Took you long enough, Mr. Stark.”

Dr. Fury stood serious, intimidating. Void of colour, he was, in which his entire demeanour was tenebrous. Sliced through the left eye, Tony noticed of him, was a scar that pierced through an iced cornea, and fit the sunken scowl of his face well. If he asked, Tony was sure it told an interesting story.

“I had _no_ idea this place existed,” he admitted. Fury returned to his assortment of boxes, unbothered. Tony watched him. “There even a point in asking how you know of me?”

“Nope.” Fury kept his back to him, worked through his stuff. “Your daddy’s a big name.”

Tony shrugged. “Fair enough."

Fury reached into a box and pulled out a stack of stocky books, let them hit the clear area of the bench with a thud of dust. He seemed unaffected by the wave of grime, and merely waved away the particles that emerged from the activity.

“What’d this building used to be?” Tony asked.

Fury flashed the red fabric cover of a novel he took from the pile. “Library archive.”

“We had one of those?”

“Something ‘bout the state of these damn books tells me the rest of your school didn’t know either.” Fury examined it a moment more, placed it back on the small tower from which he retrieved it. He then rested an elbow on the height of the stack, looked expectantly at Tony. “You gonna tell me why you’re here?”

“Shouldn’t be much of a surprise.” Tony shook a deducing finger. “Weren’t you anticipating me a minute ago?”

He tutted. “ _Please_. No Stark ever walks into a room with this many shiny instruments and no reason.”

Tony thought a moment.

“You better shoot now, or I’ll send you on your way—”

“Last month, I had an accident.”

Fury narrowed his eyes, put a balled fist on his hip. “What _kind_ of an accident?”

Tony let off his backpack behind him. He promptly took apart the buttons of his shirt just atop his chest, spread apart the fabric with both hands. Immediately, into Fury’s cautious stare, shone the effervescent blue light from Tony’s writhing heart. His eyes widened.

“I need this thing checked out.”

Fury, a second bewitched, coughed up a laugh. “I’m no doctor."

“Neither am I,” Tony said, shrugged off his blazer, “but I feel like the machinery in here will suffice.”

Tony skirted around the tables, took immediately to examining the apparatuses and all their height with quick, educated glances. It had been a minute since Howard had let him frolic among the labs back at home—been a minute since he could work on _anything_ after his incident with Clint—and a rush of fervent energy flowed through the pulse of his head. He threw himself in front of a random machine without approval, caring not for Dr. Fury’s permission. “Mr. Stark,” Fury said with linear warning, watched him ignore him. “I can’t let you do that.”

“And why not?” Tony said, looked back. He held a pencil-sized probe in his right hand attached to the machine in front of him.

“You think I would’ve gotten my job if I let kids run around using untested equipment?”

“I’m Howard Stark’s _son._ ”

Fury walked up to him, rested his arm on the machine. “And, what, that makes you above the law?"

Tony looked down at his chest, felt around the smooth metal edge. "Makes me a little more experienced than the average teenager, apparently.”

Fury saw Tony’s eyes tick. “Tony Stark,” he scolded, “do _not_ put that damn thing in your body.”

Against his warning—because that’s what Tony does, hates when people tell him _no_ —he jabbed the probe’s needle into the raised side of the blue device, let it abruptly puncture through the metal with a contained burst. Tony put his focus on the machine’s switches with immediacy, flicked up the one he believed to be the power button, and braced himself for a power reading, a greater light, _anything._

To his surprise, nothing happened.

“Switchboard’s off,” Fury said, crossed his arms. "If only you had cared to listen for another five seconds.”

Tony went croaky, held the probe with both hands, lurched a bit. He blinked at an odd feeling. “Jesus. Why does this sort of hurt?"

“Why do you think?”

He pulled the needle out again in a swift jut, which left a slot that dived into the blue contained within his chest. Tony was fine for a moment, chuckled even at the length of the thick needle as he brought it to his face. But then his eyelids flickered slightly, head swayed, mouth dropped. He stumbled backwards. Fury instinctively held out his arms.

“Don’t you _dare_ pass out in my brand new facility, Stark.”

“We’re,” Tony began groggily, tried to repose himself, “going to have to solder this hole up.”

Fury sighed.

~ ~ ~

Tony sat upon a stool—which Dr. Fury had taken out of storage—and let him finish closing the aperture with a hand blow torch. Eventually, Fury switched the flame off, sighed for the second time, and walked around him to put the instrument down on the bare table. Tony began to do up his open shirt.

“Never, _ever_ , present yourself to someone in the manner in which you just did,” Fury said, pulled out another stool, sat on it too. He studied Tony for a moment, who straightened out his uniform atop the bulge of his chest. “You happy now?” he asked, lowered his face to address Tony directly. "Tick that stunt off your bucket list, ‘cause it's never happening again.”

Tony slimmed his lips, looked back up at him. “You’re not going to like what I’m about to say."

“ _Good God_ —"

“I need to use this place to find out more about my heart.”

Fury scoffed.

Tony put an arm on the table next to him, pointed at his chest that was dimmed by white cotton. “Don’t you think the blue glow indicates something worth looking into?”

“Hell, I wouldn’t even care if it were a hot, raging pink.” Fury leaned in serious. “Go ask your _billionaire, tech-giant father_ about it, if it really bothers you.”

It was Tony’s turn to deride the concept. “Like he’d tell me."

Fury looked over the space, rubbed his mouth, contemplated. “You _know_ tampering with a pacemaker—or, whatever that thing is—could kill you, right? Look at what putting in that needle barely did.”

Tony sighed. “Yeah, but that was reckless of me. Just a bit.”

“And who the _damn hell_ says you aren’t going to work like that again?”

“I won’t.” Tony mediated on the idea, squinted into it, held onto his lip. "I want to do tests. Measure voltage. Make small, eased incisions. Small, eased, _supervised_ incisions.”

“Nope,” Fury said, breathed, gave him a look of resolute unbelief. “I’m not letting a kid—"

“But—"

"A _kid_ , equipped with a turbulent device he knows nothing about, run loose in a standardised engineering lab.”

“I just said I want to be supervised," Tony explicated. "By _you_."

“And I just said _no_.”

Tony stood. “You know, if this thing in my heart was as volatile as you're insinuating it is, my father wouldn’t have allowed it in the first place.”

Fury shook his head incomprehensibly. “What do you call _almost fainting_ the minute you tampered with it, then, if not volatile?"

“Mind over matter."

And then Dr. Fury—who _knew_ Tony had the argumentative power equivalent to a small battalion—stood and walked over, expression unchanged, to the bench that held the boxes he had begun to move. He picked one up, grabbed it by its two handles, and made his way back to the arch through which the entrance of the facility was presented. “This is the last time I’m telling you,” Fury said. “I’m not letting you use this place as your own damn workshop.”

He left him standing in the space, surrounded by the tables, impacted by a soldered hole in his chest where his curiosity lie.

Tony wasn’t too worried. It was _definitely_ mind over matter.

And he always managed to do, _get_ , what he wanted, one way or another. In fact, Dr. Fury had lost the minute he rebuked him.

~ ~ ~

Steve hadn’t been watching Tony, per se, but he knew where to find him.

It had been a week or two riddled with trite small-talk, misdirection and redirection—general _avoidance_ —and Steve hadn’t sifted the reason as to why. On one hand of importance, Tony was too familiar to just shake off and accept his ignorance. Steve swore he’d seen the eyes, the expression, felt the snarked embellishments of his conversation before. There was something recognised that kept him at a steady pull towards Tony. Steve couldn’t particularly discern what it was that he seemed to be acquainted with, but he hypothesised lengthened encounter was needed for it to be properly seen. And if Tony was evading him, that would be impossible.

On the other hand of importance, there was something else he needed.

Steve wandered further from the congestion of the campus, looked up at the silver sky and predicted another late-day of rain. He had worn a grey sweater vest that day, and, at that point, almost dissolved into his overhead as he walked. The wind put his hair aloft.

He continued his way over to a house as mature as the rest of the school, but externally unkempt.

When he had heard a group of peers in his class discuss Tony Stark’s whereabouts—a topic that dipped in and out of popularity in the whispers—Steve ensured he listened. Whilst most of it concerned his past, in which Steve heard conjectures about _experimentation_ and _some asshole named Clint Barton_ , there was a moment of pondering as to where he happened to have disappeared to _again_ at his return. Another student jumped in, interpreted promptly Tony’s frequency at the newly-established engineering facility as his attempt to hide from the rest of the school.

“Near the pond?” Someone in the conversation asked. “Well, he picked a damn good place to run to. No one wants to go near that old thing."

But when Steve finally approached the building, saw its ivy and feudal adornment and lonesome stasis against the rest of the institute—and saw the black water that extended behind it into some sort of expanded, unattainable realm—he wasn’t as deterred as he thought he’d be. In fact, Steve was intrigued.

Through the doors, Steve stepped into the antique internal, let his shoe soles tap against the hard, checkered floor. He moved slowly through the dispensed, dusted air, smelled both the potent ache of desertion and the freshness of reinvigoration, activity. The short hall in which he looked around and up and down branched into stairs, a back-leading exit, or red-wood bifold doors. In the third's windows he saw the side of an individual’s small frame, focus sprawled on a plethora of items spread on a dark table, and a machine.

At the echoed movement of wood and wheels on hard floor, Tony—who had been engrossed in a snaked clump of wiring, tools, pencils, paper—looked up and saw his undesired visitor. He narrowed a complexed, almost unimpressed stare, then turned back around to his work. “Think you’ve got your classes confused again."

Steve walked around the nearest table, put his hands in his pockets. “They, uh, said you’d be here.”

Tony furrowed his eyebrows. “Who’s _they?”_

“Just… the talk around.”

Tony remained with his back to Steve, fiddled with his work. “ _Right_.”

“It’s a nice place."

“Yeah,” Tony agreed distantly. He outreached his hand behind him, pointed it towards Steve. "Pass me that screwdriver, will you?”

Steve looked at the bench to his left, which _thankfully_ appeared clearer than the one in front of Tony, and quickly selected a small tool that seemed adequate. He reached over, handed it to him.

Tony looked at it, sighed, spun to face him. “This… is the wrong one.”

“Tony—"

“What are you _doing_ here, Steve?”

“I came to talk to you.”

He shook his head. “If this is under order of _thou holy Coulson_ —"

“It’s not,” Steve clarified, held his hands up in defence.

At that, Tony turned slowly, confusedly, back around to his workstation. Steve sighed through his nose, jumped at the need to keep Tony’s focus. At this rate, he’d be getting nothing out of him.

“I heard you’re pretty good at science,” Steve said suddenly.

“ _Pretty good?”_ Tony turned his head to the side, squinted at him, scoffed. “You _really_ can’t discern who I am, can you?”

“I’m trying to,” Steve said, wrinkled his brows in thought. He shook his head. “Actually, that isn’t the point.”

“Are you going to get to it?”

“I wanted to ask you a question,” he said. “About…”

“Science?”

“Yes.”

Tony exhaled, put his tools and wires down, used his hands to rest upon the bench's edges and looked straight through Steve. He saw an actual undershirt this time—white, and beneath the uniformed guise of the blazer—which had cutout a hole for a blue, shining face that projected from Tony's chest. Steve raised his expression at it a moment. He’d never seen anything like it.

“What’s your question?”

Steve blinked out of his stare, promptly picked up a stool nearby so as not to leave Tony waiting. He brought it over and sat. “Do you know much about psychology?”

Tony scoffed again. "When you have a father like mine, you do.”

On the stool, Steve’s expression questioned.

“It’s a joke, Steve,” Tony continued. “I’m saying that I should. Or, maybe, enough equivalent to a first-year college student about to drop the class. Ask.”

Steve shifted, thought about it a moment. “Can anger cause… _amnesia?”_

Tony crossed his arms. “Under what circumstance?”

“That’s what I’m wondering."

“Is this about yourself?” he then asked. Tony had no direction or interest as to where the encounter would lead at that point. Nevertheless, he continued to prod, as that was what he did. Didn’t stop until he got answers. “You’re gonna have to tell me more, Steve. I’m no mind reader.”

Steve wiped his hands on his school pants, tried to think of how to explain it. “Say, for example, you start to get angry."

Tony nodded, held his bottom lip between his fingers. “I’m picturing it."

"You let the heat build inside you, or, maybe, _feel_ it happen without your control.” Steve hesitated. “And then, when you hit the peak of the anger, you completely—"

“ _Black out?”_ Tony interjected. “Like, from blood pressure?”

“Maybe. Well, I don’t know.” Steve went quiet. "That’s why I came to you.”

“Hold on,” Tony said, tripped on the situation, held his hand out in pause. “You said _amnesia_ before. Are you implying that, at this point, you’d be awake and moving around without your knowledge? _Not_ unconscious?”

Steve thought for a second, furrowed his eyebrows. “Yes.”

Tony looked blankly at him. And then he laughed.

"You really made your way over here to waste my time, didn’t you?”

Steve's face was imbrued with confusion. “I’m being serious."

“No, you’re not,” Tony said, tutted in disbelief. In that moment, he surmised no possibility of Steve being truthful with him, and was absolutely certain in that.

But then he looked over, saw the solemn extent of Steve's expression, saw the sink of his hulking figure towards the stool, and Tony's diffracted laughing subsided. He flashed a look of his own severe bafflement. Steve laced his fingers together, let them hang in waiting.

“What are you inferring happens once you black out?” Tony continued again, tipped his head in brooding and crossed his arms.

Steve breathed in, looked back up to him with despairing, ashamed eyes. He uttered a few words that he wished he couldn’t articulate, wished he lied through with every syllable. “I… get violent."

Tony felt a few ghost kicks just below the dip of his abdomen. He touched the spot that instinctively gave off an apparitional ache, swallowed at the twinge that came with remembrance. “You get _violent?”_

Steve underwent unsmiling reflection. “Judging from the state of my surroundings as I start to remember things, that’s my best guess.”

For a moment, Tony was caught in a memory that divulged hard against his tongue. Seeing Steve—his wide frame, the possibilities and advantages of his force—and knowing he was capable of such behaviour, he swallowed.

_They surrounded him, boxed him in between large shoulders and vicious faces. Tony knew what they came for that day was different._

Tony tried to pull himself together. Regardless of Steve's veracity—whether what he said was true, any of it, _all_ of it—Tony refused to throw anymore sawdust at the fire, let the flecks spark like gullible gasps and arm-locked retention. He wasn’t going to let Steve sway his focus, use the moment's forged vulnerability against himself to pounce. And Tony had things he needed to find out about himself, let alone other people, so the whole debacle did nothing more than waste his time and make him fret.

“This is ridiculous,” he said, gave up. “Don’t know who told you to harass the nerd and tell him to divide by zero, but I’m done entertaining.”

“But, Tony—"

“I don’t believe a word of it, Steve.” Tony looked down, eyebrows raised. “ _Really._ I have nothing more to say.”

Returning to his workspace, Tony braced his back to Steve in finality, pursued his continued disregard of him. He fidgeted with his tools, hoped in all his squinting and clamouring that Steve would just _leave_ , stop him from thinking about it all any longer. But Steve didn’t move. He sat upon the stool still, face frowned and confused and almost dismal, stared straight at Tony trying to—once again—figure out _why_ the rejection came.

“You’d better go,” Tony then said all quiet and sharp, surrendered to spelling it out for him. His hand tightened around the wire he had picked up to commence his work. “Dr. Fury doesn’t like students who aren’t his in here. Doesn’t like students in general, it seems."

Steve stood, remained staring into his back. He was restless with a desperation that Tony failed to comprehend, tried his hardest to restrain what he needed to divulge. "I _really_ need your help,” was all he said; his concluding plea.

Tony took a breath, let it rise and drop his shoulders like an insensitive shrug. “Forget it, Steve.”

And after a moment or so of gaping at the back of Tony’s head, wondering where the conversation wilted—waiting for _something_ —Steve left the vicinity promptly.

~ ~ ~

The barter— _blackmail_ —for the extra space was definitely worth it.

Tony had settled in quite nicely; he expanded his clutter and workings onto multiple benches, made his fingerprint mark on the various machinery available in the space. Though Dr. Fury had initially declined him being there, Tony took it upon himself to speak the first few breaths of student life into the facility. He spent his time, between and after classes, working on understanding the device in his chest, and had picked up a rhythm of testing that Fury had unfavourably become used to. When Fury decided, one early afternoon, to push out a row of casement on the far windowed wall in an attempt to, as he had said, _“clear out the hot breath of that damn ticking head of yours,”_ Tony knew his existence and persistence had somewhat been accepted, seen as legit and customary.

It only really took the threat of unregulated experimentation in unfit conditions (i.e. his _dorm room_ ) to get Fury to agree so. Tony explained this to him, all calmly and cunningly, like a businessman. And then when Fury told him where to go, Tony made it clear that possessing the knowledge of such happening—and doing nothing about it as a _teacher_ —would put a lot of things in jeopardy for him. _Especially_ if that experimentation happened to be on the object of life-force of a student.

Fury grumbled something about the manipulative sons of wealthy men. Tony stayed put.

Since that day, he had unearthed a considerable amount about the blue glowing eye that donned his torso. To begin with, it was _definitely_ a power source. It emitted immense light as a result of its energy generation, which Tony realised was indeed to maintain a smaller item that kept his heart steady and working. At its basics, it was a _really cool_ pacer. However, Tony understood that such a contraption didn’t require a whole heap of potential to work. There was a large quantity of excess power he detected running. An _incredibly_ large quantity.

And Tony wanted to see how that extra energy could be harnessed.

Making smaller, more diligent incisions—like he had planned to—allowed him to attach wiring that drove the energy into a beam pad, which he secured around his right palm for easy assessment. That brief stint of dizziness that occurred at first encounter of tool to heart was merely, as Tony had realised, the result of expectancy and self-hype, and it hadn’t happened again. For the time being, he had managed to additionally feed another wire into the face to collect readings in which he varied the prospective strength of emissions internalised through his computer. As a result, however, all operation of it had been pure, controlled simulation.

Tony hadn’t seen the physical, _actual_ capability of his setup as of yet.

Until Steve Rogers returned one other pearly afternoon.

The weather had barely cleared for the day, left droplets of slow-falling drizzle against the facility’s gold-bordered windows, and Tony believed this was the perfect atmosphere to work in. His ideal atmosphere also happened to be among the mess of thought, in which he had actualised his thinking and tests on various sheets of loose paper and had them scattered everywhere. His tools and instruments were sporadically laid, and his wiring was out and wreathed around the tables. He had other aspects of his mess around, like bolts and screws, food wrappers and books, small devices he had found around the room and dragged out to ask Dr. Fury about using later. This afternoon, like those preceding it, Tony was already wired and ready to go with his testing. He stood amidst the cluttered tables, humming.

At the sound of the entrance door open, Tony expected Fury, incurious about whatever he decided to work on until he inevitably booted him out for the day.

When he heard the entry then slam shut, he couldn’t attribute such an action to Fury’s ingress. Tony looked behind him, puzzled as to whom it may be.

And _there_ Steve was.

He sighed. “I’ve already said all I need to,” Tony said, returned to face his laptop to which his wires were promptly attached again. “There’s no use coming here to plead with me.”

Steve stood in the wide arch that led to the breadth of Tony’s workspace. He kept his eyes on Tony, said nothing, moved nothing. Tony squinted in confusion at his stasis, turned around properly to face Steve's still figure behind him.

There was something about his expression that matched the day outside, something dark under which the yellow lights of the facility shadowed his acute, detached _frown_. His entire demeanour was solid and odd; Steve had always acted at his most politest and naïve, and that didn’t include whatever removed scowl he happened to be projecting straight at Tony. 

“What’s with the face?” Tony asked, looked him up and down.

Steve breathed deeply, heavily. _Slowly._

Tony swallowed. His indifference started to waver. “You can intimidate me all you want, Steve. I’m not budging with my decision."

Steve began to approach him. He walked stolid, heavy steps towards Tony, eyes devoted chillingly to him and nothing else in the room. Tony watched him, saw a placid hostility in his face, and felt the dumbbell of his heart drop slowly to his feet. The situation was so familiar, far too familiar. _Too soon._

Steve’s aura matched that of Tony’s previous tyrant.

_Clint walked his way over to Tony with fists balled of brick, let him know by his knotted eyebrows that he wasn’t going anywhere this time._

The offensive push of atmosphere at each step towards Tony strengthened the vignette around his vision. He blinked quickly, his respiration rapid. “Steve?” Tony called to him.

Steve moved towards the rows of cluttered tables that distanced himself from Tony with inconvenience. In a sudden, violent, _unexpected_ act, he swept the mess of the closest surface to him onto the ground, let measuring equipment, contraptions, lunch, a ray tube or so of Fury’s, aggressively clamour against the checkered flooring. Paper unsafe from Steve’s brutality flew around in commotion. Tony flinched. 

“ _Steve!”_ He yelled out against the tumult, pushed himself back into the edge of the bench behind him. “What the _hell_ are you doing?”

The sequence next was fast, unanticipated. Tony felt as though he was roughly grabbed, thrown back in time a month or so, but not quite.

Without warning, Steve surged towards Tony, used his big arms to shove all the tables outwards of his path with enormous power. They landed like an arrow indicating Tony, spilling the rest of his clutter onto the floor in chaos. Acting quick, and almost in reflex—like it was natural, _destined_ for him to do so—Tony held the hand with the beam pad up in defence and mashed his left palm on his laptop in which the wiring accruing simulation detached.

Immediately, a strong, blue-tinted stream of light emerged from his palm like a splendid laser.

It hit Steve incredibly, pushed him up and off his feet and into the bookshelf behind him. He fell onto the floor. The shelving spit, atop him, multiple books Fury had chosen to keep from the rummage he began the facility with. Tony, in similar manner, was thrust back by the immense strength, and the wiring from his chest to the pad on his hand was jerked out of function at his comparatively-lessened stagger. At once, the blaster dispelled. The room was left in havoc.

Tony, on the other hand, was left in shock.

He panted, collapsed back onto the bench preceding him, let his hands hold him upright as he attempted to decipher _what the hell_ had just happened. Steve had been standing over _there_ —menacing with all his darkened burl but no immediate threat—and then had suddenly recked the room with a swipe of otherworldly strength, charged _straight_ at Tony to do the same to him. Stuck deep within the clamminess of his shock, Tony realised his chest had saved him once again. In this instance, it had let out enough energy to propel his aggressor into the wall behind him.

The device embedded in him powered a _laser_ that could move a raging man.

Tony flicked distressed eyes to the opposite end of the room. Amongst fallen books, crashed contraptions, sheets of displaced paper, and _just_ beneath the unsettled array of dark tables, lay Steve considerably unconscious. Tony stared at him wide, pondered quickly his vitality as his own chest rose and fell atop the accelerated rhythm of his heart. If he wasn’t mistaken, a laser of such force was near fatal at contact. Tony took timid steps towards his sprawled, uniformed body.

“Steve?”

He eyed Steve and his limp form, his squashed cheek against cold floor, in the spot he had fallen to. Cautious as he was fearful, he bent down to him, kneeled careful above assorted, messed paper. Why Tony didn’t, in that moment, run—do everything he didn’t, _couldn’t_ , when things had gone south with Clint the last time—was something inexplainable. It was like he felt the situation was different, like something in his peripheral couldn’t equate Steve to the tyrant that pursued him, _hurt_ him, prior. Steve hadn’t even managed to touch him. Instead, this time, Tony had laid the hand.

It was more so a metaphorical hand—a beam of light plunging through him like the punch of a giant—but _still._

Tony poked softly at Steve’s head. He drew senselessly-fluttered eyelashes from Steve, a twitch of the mouth, but nothing more. Courage growing at Steve’s immobility, Tony moved nearer to him, leaned closer in to his placid face. He examined him, wondered if his bones had broken, if his blood had pacified in the same way his own had after Clint’s thrashing.

And then, promptly—almost as if on cue—Steve’s neck turned slowly inward, let his eyelids scrunch into folds of reawakening, and he struggled slowly to the support of his palms. He began to push himself up without hurry or prompt. Tony stumbled back at the movement, watched Steve reanimate with caveat and preparedness. He shakily brought his left hand to his heart, all the while his stare kept on Steve, and took hold of the stray external wiring that had broken off the beam pad. It was of great preparation he powered-up his only form of formidable offence against Steve’s strength, as being _that_ close to him didn’t leave Tony much of an opening to grasp at protection.

But Steve, as he lifted his body into a wobbled crouch, fell backward onto the bookshelf and slumped, opened his eyes into a pained gaze, wasn’t in that temper anymore. He looked at Tony, breathed steadily into the bricked pain of being thrown into wood against hard wall, and asked the question that repeated through both of their loud minds. “What happened?” 

Tony stared back at him, flickered rapidly his stare over the heap of his flopped, big figure. He could see that the foregoing darkness in Steve had been percolated through his eyes, left them floundering beneath something else.

It was desperation. A pure, glassed, tortured _wail_ for help, enclosed behind the corneas.

Tony—without expecting it—exhaled. He softened his tensed shoulders, almost drooped into a collapse himself to match. “Alright, I get it. _I get it,_ ” he said, panted out the last of his shock. "I’ll help you, Steve. _Jesus_.”

And then, like bad timing thought itself a saviour of the day, the front door of the facility opened in entrance. Tony stilled, widened his eyes into Steve’s weakened own, and scooted closer to him, hid himself from the view of the inciting hallway behind a table. He turned his head towards the arch devoid of the bifold doors. The shadowed, crisp footsteps of Dr. Fury’s stride fell into Tony’s line of view. He paused.

Fury dropped the box he held from the height of his clutch. Tony saw it hit the tiling with a dull thud, heard its insides rattle.

“This better be the result of a small nuclear explosion,” Fury said loudly, managed to shroud the hint of rage behind his austere voice, "or whoever’s in here is getting their asses _expelled_."

Tony grimaced.

Bearing all his pain, so did Steve.


	3. Chapter 3

After his brief stint with Steve's odd violence, Tony’s plans to work alone had changed drastically.

The idea that Steve was meditating on the image of him, for one reason or another, made Tony wary about leaving him alone; his name was burned in his subconscious and his temper was a withering candle wick. Tony, on this notion, deduced it would be _passable_ to give Steve loitering privileges, so long as he didn’t ask too many questions and let him work and think at his own pace. Steve was, also, as new to the school as the fresh few tears of the day were to that afternoon, and Tony evoked some sense of routine pity. He was _still_ getting lost (but who could blame him; the campus was a small country) and really just wanted a stable, unchanging face to answer to. A _friend._

Tony was barely stable, but he _did_ agree to help him reveal more about his issues. And, as dangerous as it was to have a frail heart near such potential for erraticism, that was Tony’s acknowledgement of _acquaintanceship_.

Inevitably, it was strange for Tony to get used to Steve.

Trodding down the concrete halls, backpack strap in hand—hearing hard, fast steps hit flatly against external, wet patter—and, through the shoal of students, meeting eyes with _Steve_ , was unusual; Tony had forced himself not to frown at the exchange. Steve was looking to Tony for familiarity, just a reassuring glance between classes, and it would prove awkward if he dismissed this and failed to explain later on why. _That was a normal thing people who hung out did,_ he had told himself. _Apart of the normal things you used to do with your friends_. _Friend_. _Nodded at them. Walked with them, even._

Tony was excellent in explaining science. His emotions—or, rather, behavioural inconsistencies—were another thing.

Regardless of how frequently they saw each other throughout the lightless day, they refrained from communication until they met in the early evenings in the facility. It was an unspoken divulgement in which Tony ensured he remained the facade of friendless, strange, strong on his _own_ , and Steve didn’t have much say on it. Then, later in the day, Tony would work on what he had to, and Steve would sift through his homework at a bench different from his. Eventually he would come over to watch him diligently, work closer to him, and wait for an update in whatever he seemed busy in, like he expected Tony to share such with him and that everything he did was all towards helping him in the end. But they didn’t speak much, other than Tony easing Steve with the casual, impartial question about himself, his _condition_ , just to let him know he was still planning on helping.

In reality, Tony had no idea where to begin with him.

~ ~ ~

One day, Tony had been kept in late during his last class.

An hour or so after school had finished—and the clouds were deep, shrouding stones that had begun to weep gingerly—Tony made his way over to the facility much more behind time than usual. He strolled, hands in pockets, under the darkness of the postmeridian, looked around into the shaded grass expanse through which he traversed. It was seemingly just him, walking the sea of blades that his school was built atop, the acreage of twisting mounds and ponds, being stared down at by the storeys of New England scales and their steeples. Most of the students, at that time of the day, did not pool around the clearer areas of the school, and preferred to be dining or inside their dorms. With the weather always looking the way it did, any opportunity to be indoors a student took.

Except for _one_ , it seemed; a small figure, male, was crouched _just_ behind a hill that escaped the initial of the school’s large stretch.

Tony stopped in interest. He squinted, tried to discern who the student was, what he happened to be doing outside when the sky would weep at any moment. All he could see, from his position, was a short, hunkered back, the behind of browned hair, and the individual’s displaced focus out onto unseen ground. His predictions of weather came appropriately, and a few weighty droplets fell atop Tony’s cheeks. He kept watch of the student a moment, told himself that if nothing was too overtly suspicious he’d continue on his way.

And that’s when, from the figure, came a short, sharp lament, distanced by the steal of cool air. The student’s frame folded and fell promptly forward, into the grass and out of view.

Considering that was noticeably suspicious, Tony approached the unknown student warily, and stood over him in examination.

He discerned first his age. A year or so younger, he seemed, fit cosily in a grey school sweater that was ridden up on one arm. He had fallen onto his face, let his head turn the opposite direction to his body uncomfortably, and had his lips slightly pouted and parted at his collapse of liveliness. The student was nevertheless incorrupt—definitely juvenile and guileless, with a clean countenance and unkempt hairstyle—and had no belongings or such around him.

Tony kept his stare on his unidentified peer and wondered if he should alert the nurses that a freshman had passed out from the sheer fluster of the school. _The buildings were quite dizzying,_ he admitted to himself. _Pretentious was a better word._

And then Tony saw—just underneath the student’s placid arm—a white, viscid structure.

Like an intricate, _animate_ trellis, it retracted up and into a point of origin near the bend of his wrist swallowed by the grass. Then, it disappeared. The boy didn’t move.

Tony took some jolted steps back, widened his eyes. At first, he believed it to be a snake. A white-belly, maybe, though those weren’t native to the region. Then, he pondered tree roots, and whatever may upturn earth in such a manner. Like gophers. But both of those conjectures were shrouding a version of the truth he had seen: an unexplainable, web-like fibre that was traced back to (and would seemingly emerge from) this unconscious peer of his. And it was moving, and so it was _alive._

Tony decided three things in that moment. One, was to not alert help. It was selfish, sure, but the student’s back rose and fell in breathing—there was no signs of threatening injury, which eased his decision to leave him—and Tony knew that the heavier downpour would pelt down, though rude, an awakening.

Two, was to proceed to the facility in a brisk trudge. No stopping for any other misplaced figures he may or may not come across.

Three, was to find out who that boy was.

~ ~ ~

Tony squandered his time between classes stalking.

It was impractical—and highly eroding of all dignities—but sleuthing was what had to be done to find what he needed. And he got just that.

The student, who Tony found that afternoon, was not a freshman, but a sophomore. He took a startling number of AP classes, including Spanish and History, and was the most busy, busy, _busy_ teenager Tony had ever regretted following around. The sheer number of extracurriculars the boy attended was almost disgusting: Chorus, Academic Decathlon _and_ Triathlon, the accompanying Spanish Club to his extraneous language frivolities, the Film Production Club, the _LEGO_ Builders Club, the _Model United Nations_ meet, and at least two sports. Tony swore there was a third, but he gave up trying to figure that one out.

He was heaving and frustrated, and had managed to give himself multiple tours of the entire school again, when he realised approach was the next step.

The school’s sports field (though Tony, in all his snooping, had seen his peer with _two_ different types of balls and a stick) seemed untouched by a multitude of activities they refused to partake in. Tony knew some aspect of sporting occurred in his school, but a large majority of students preferred to remain prim and allow their sluggish distinction to exercise them instead. Nevertheless, the grass in that region burned almost lime, presented itself between two goal posts and a set of wooden bleachers of ten or so rows. In all his years at the school, Tony had never sat on them once.

Until that midday, when he decided to watch his target play soccer under a pleasant occurrence of sun through soft cloud.

Tony had been lazed on the fifth or so bleacher, legs raised, laid on his side in recline. A gaggle of students in jerseys ran around beneath him in pursuit of a purple ball, hollering uniform call-outs to their teammates. It was a nice day, no rain at that moment, and if Tony wasn’t placed awkwardly out in the open for a reason he’d have just done it to bask in the better weather. Plus, he used to watch the Super Bowl with Howard. This was _kind of_ like that.

He examined his peer in question, who darted through his opposition with close possession of the ball. For all the spreading himself thin he did, he was exceptional at the sport. A _natural._ Almost _too_ much a natural, it seemed, as he scored another clean goal without so much of a tackle from his opponents. At that, Coach Hill blew her whistle, and the game stopped. She gestured him over to her. Tony saw Coach, hands on her hips, communicating something low and stern. The student resisted and was hesitant in his manner, rubbed his elbow and shook his head, until she nodded in Tony’s direction and mouthed _Go._

From the field, he made his way over to the bleachers. Crossing over the first one, the student stared up at Tony and fidgeted. Tony mentally prepared his impression.

“Coach said, uh…" He looked back and behind himself at his far-standing coach for approval, and winced as he returned to face Tony at her reaffirm. “Coach said that watching us won’t qualify you anymore for the team than you already _aren’t.”_

Tony looked over him and down at the students, who had stopped in a small gather to stare up at him for interrupting their game, eyes slim. Coach Hill stood, arms crossed and glaring expectantly. “Aw, _really_ Coach?” Tony called out emphatically, held out questioning hands with great performance. “I was _just_ taking notes so I can try out for next season. You gotta give me a chance."

She squinted up at him, returned just as loud her remark. “Don’t you have a _science_ class to be at, Mr. Stark?”

“Stark?” The student in front of him then asked, squinted at Tony. His eyes broadened in realisation, eyebrows raised in wonder. Yes, it was _that_ Stark. "Stark! You’re Stark? Tony. Tony Stark. _Holy cow_.” He fumbled on his words. “It’s a pleasure. _Honour_. I knew some pretty reputable people went to this school, but _you_ … I mean, your father’s work is—"

Tony raised an eyebrow. “My father’s work.”

He gulped in embarrassment. “ _Right._ Right, of course. Yes, it is. And _your work_ is _your work_ —”

“You play well,” Tony interrupted, interlaced his fingers. 

“What?” The boy laughed nervously into it. “No. I don’t, _really_ , think so—“

“Take the compliment,” Tony said. Then he spun to sit properly, outstretched his arms casually on the bleacher preceding him. "How’d you get good?”

Tony watched as his peer blew out his cheeks in contemplation (or silent stress) and looked around, surveyed the field that glistened slightly in the day-before’s wet. “Uh, practice,” he said suddenly, coughed. “Practice.”

“Must be lots of practice.”

“Yeah. _Tons_."

There was a silence between them that proceeded. Tony stared at him, remained mum to let him talk, but could only hear the ambience of the team who had commenced training behind him. Tony used the moment to examine the student further. He was awkward, odd, let his eyes wander a lot. He hadn’t changed up close from what he looked like from afar. In this encounter, however, Tony noticed a thin, pushed mouth, shifty waves at the lick of his hair, and an overall anxiety that sat cemented underneath the form of his face.

At once, the student wiped a grass-stained palm on his jersey, put a foot on the aisle's bleacher in found confidence. He extended the clean hand succeeding a sports wristband hesitantly up to Tony, though he could barely reach the gesture. “I’m… I’m Parker.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. A name to the face. “Parker?”

“Oh, _no_. Peter, actually. _Peter._ ” He turned around, gestured to the name sprawled atop his jersey’s back in green block letters. “ _Parker_. Peter, though, and I—”

“Parker!” Coach Hill yelled out to him. She signalled his prompt return by tapping an invisible watch.

“Well, _Parker Peter_ ,” Tony said, and stood up from the bleacher with a heave. "I won’t take up anymore of your time.”

Peter nodded timorously. “Alright, yeah. _Thanks._ I’ll see you around, then. I guess. I mean, we go to the same school, so—" And then he backed away slowly—hand raised in adieu, smile slimmed—and raced down to the field, apologised profusely to his team and coach when he finally rejoined them. Coach Hill swiftly whistled them into a new game, and Peter, unlike his demeanour, bolted across the grass with great courage. He, again, managed to dispel any prospective tackling, and took the ball down the field with ease. Tony, a wind at his vantage pointing his focus, looked closer at Peter.

And from his right soccer shoe, Tony noticed a cream-coloured lattice that held the soccer ball to his upper like a dog on a leash. He scored another goal.

Coach whooped and clapped. “Now _that’s_ what I’m talking about, Parker!”

Tony stifled a laugh. _Smart._

~ ~ ~

“No, following the kid around _isn’t_ about helping your case.” And though he was talking to Steve, Tony said it to the split wire in his hand.

Steve, at the other end of the table, rubbed his mouth. “Then why do it?”

Tony looked up from the wire. “When did everything become about _just_ you, Rogers?"

He fumbled at the catch. “Look, I wasn’t—"

“ _Your_ thing is just as important as _his_ thing.” Tony returned his eyes diligently to the frayed red cable, muttered the next part in focus. “And _my_ thing.”

Steve breathed, tapped some fingers on the dark wood. “Are you sure you aren’t—you know—taking too much on?"

“Do you _want_ me to help you, or not?”

“I do."

“Good,” Tony said, kept his acute stare on his work. "Don’t question.”

Steve decided, at that, to refrain from talking. He pulled out a couple of sheets of school work from underneath a cog or piece of metal or _something_ , and Tony eyed him at the movement. They both remained outwardly silent for a minute or so (as they usually did whenever they were both together in the facility), but Tony's brain was seemingly ticking and brewing beneath the guise of prodding and twisting things. Steve could sense it, gave a scrutinising gaze over a held-up sheet. Tony bounced his leg for a moment more, looked elsewhere, before speaking.

“I mean, what the hell _is_ that thing?"

“What?”

“The _goo_. The stringy thing that slithered through the grass and back under him like, like...” Tony turned around, words beneath him, and furrowed a brow. He waved a thinking finger onto another instance. “The tiny, _tiny_ rope of glue that held the soccer ball to his shoe."

Steve raised an eyebrow in unbelief, held his paper still. His eyes looked around. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Of _course_ you wouldn't,” Tony scoffed. He then looked out, got caught in a distant meditation of thought and lost knowledge and innovation and new things. “But neither do I.”

Watching him, Steve exhaled and put his sheet down. He stood up resolutely, pushed the stool out from under him. That was it for the day. “I’m getting supper.”

Tony didn’t move, or register the action, and remained within his thinking all lost and remote and hazy. Steve narrowed his eyes at him. _“Tony?"_

“Hmm?”

“Supper?" _Very_ ambitious of Steve to invite him with the sort arrangement they had going on.

“Oh. Absolutely _not_.” Tony sorted through an array of bits on his desk, picked up the wire he had let down in contemplation. “This… wiring is still showing interrupted communication. I’m not leaving here ’till it’s fixed.” Then, he gestured to the leftmost bench of him at the side of the room, in which stood two fist-size cakes. “Plus, I have muffins from lunch. _Two_.”

“Well, I don’t think I’ll manage on muffins,” Steve said. He took hold of his sweater, which was folded on the edge of the table. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As Steve walked out of the facility, dimmed by the beginning of evening, Tony called out loudly, though distant, “Extra one was for _Fury_ , by the way."

And throughout the rest of the hour-and-a-half—until Fury came to both kick him out and take his rightful muffin—Tony was _still_ thinking about Peter. About his unusual abilities, about what they could possibly do. What they could possibly _be._

The possibilities were, in all of Tony’s lack of plausible reality and unrestrained thought, endless.

The wiring didn’t get fixed.

~ ~ ~

“ _Peter!_ That was your cue!”

Inside the school’s chapel—an antique stone, chiseled into a roofed mouth of artistry and stain-glass dentures—was Chorus. Their institution was secular, forced creed _only_ to success, and so Tony knew a religious structure of the sort existed only to boast architectural sophistication. _And_ , maybe, to provide a place for inheritors committing routine blasphemy (like the rich regularly did) to repent with the hopes of forgiveness, and their share of the company back. Considering the theatre had been under indefinite reconstruction since Tony was in hospital, it also happened to be the school’s main assembling point. In that moment, however, a small group of students were gathered in raised rows at the forefront of the room, and were being conducted into a smooth, harmonic ensemble piece. It echoed sweetly and wholly throughout the large, dome-like interior. 

That was until they halted their singing abruptly at the swipe of their leader’s hand, let each part of their chorus dissipate into dissonant vocal stems. Peter, smack-bang in the middle of them all, had experienced a lack of instinctual indication which refused their coherence and, in shorter words, had stuffed them up.

“I’m _so_ sorry, I really am. _Sorry_ , guys,” Peter said, looked around apologetically at his chorus, gripped his lyrics folder nervously. “But I just _can’t_ sing with… with _him_ watching.”

Tony, like a fly on concrete, was seated—lazed, _again_ , with a menacing nonchalance—in one of the chapel’s pews.

For the remainder of that week, Tony had managed to attend _all_ of Peter’s club meetings. _Every last one_. They hadn’t spoken formally since their initial encounter at Peter's soccer practice, and to uphold his cryptic facade he had appeared at each of the extracurricular activities seated far, without speaking and without engagement. Tony hoped it formulated a sort of intimidation he accrued would lead Peter _to_ him in curiosity of his pursuant air, rather than away. Maybe it would arise frustration. But, nevertheless, Peter was _definitely_ nerved. He stood there, having had enough of Tony’s ghostly appearances (that just fit _so well_ around his timetable) and looked at him with distressed, annoyed, _fearful_ eyes.

There was nothing scarier than the heir of an empire, after all.

The choral director, sporting that familiar faculty-reserved look of annoyance, turned to Tony. “A reason, Mr. Stark?”

“Principal Coulson requires Peter Parker _immediately._ ”

Her face scrutinised in suspicion. “There’s nothing _immediate_ about your lounging about.”

“Well, I’m quite enjoying the music.” Tony pursed his lips and thought deeply, though there was complacency to the action. "Which piece is this? Sounds like something from our fourteenth-century competitive catalogue. Fifteenth?"

Ignoring Tony, the director looked back at Peter. His eyes were wide in reluctance, head almost shaking in a silent _no_. “Well, _go on_ ,” she said, gestured to the chapel doors. “The quicker you go, the quicker you come back.”

Tony jumped up from the pew and proceeded for the exit in a gratified stroll, hands in his pockets. Peter yielded, sorted through his musical peers as he obligingly stepped down the choir stands. He surrendered his song folder sadly to the empty pew closest to the podium, set for the walkway, and followed Tony uneasily out of the chapel.

The outside hall was as Gregorian as its insides, with a red runner stretching from one end to its other, and oil lamps hanging and cabinets holding school treasures and trophies. Peter closed slowly the rounded, panelled doors, leaving them briefly ajar _just_ in case. Tony stood, hands still in pockets, expecting Peter’s speech first. He ensured he was at least two metres from Tony, had his left arm held reassuringly with his right palm, and wore a grey sweater vest atop a long school shirt covering awkwardly thick orange wristbands beneath both sleeves. Tony noticed this, and quirked a brow.

“Look, Tony,” Peter began. “It… it was _really_ flattering in the beginning. Kind of odd, too, but still… yeah…” He furrowed his expression, shook his head. “Uh, I… I can’t have you following me around anymore.”

“Peter—"

“It _freaks_ me out. Just a little bit. And… and I know it’s because you need something from me. But…” Peter tried to be stern, but it didn’t suit him. “I can’t do your homework.”

Tony tipped his head. “Come again?”

“I’m… I’m _very_ busy. I’m up to my ears in AP Spanish, and—"

“Peter,” Tony said, stopped him. “I can’t even remember the last time I _got_ homework."

“Oh.” Peter’s worried eyes slimmed in a sudden confusion. “So why am I here, then?”

The sound of smooth chorus reverberated through the crack at the door. Tony put his hands behind his back. “You have something you’re hiding.”

“ _What?”_ Peter instinctively tugged at his mouth sleeve, scrunched his face in _no, I don't_. “No. No, _definitely_ not. I… What makes you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tony said, thought about it. "I come from a well-seasoned family of scientists, can tell when things aren’t right. You could call it a _hunch_." Then, within the highly-decorated space, Tony gathered an idea. He began to take odd backward steps to the furthermost end of the hallway.

Peter watched him, chest rising and falling with great pace. His face looked a little clammy; green and plain. “Well, hunches aren’t _always_ correct,” he managed, voice higher.

“But _sometimes_ they are.” Tony stopped at an old red cabinet and opened slowly its glass. Inside were shelves of medallions and awards, ancient mementos of rusted bronze and silver. He settled a hand on a golden football, placed unmoved for supposed years on a small stand, which the school had won back when they displayed sporting variety; the tiny plaque beneath it mentioned a final that had occurred close to a decade ago. Tony took hold of the award, and noticed his arm strain a second. It was definitely a bit heavier than the regular football.

“I… I don’t think you’re allowed to touch those,” Peter warned.

Tony walked back, gold football in hand, and stood a further distance away from Peter. His eyes were ticking, ruminating, and Peter's seemed unsuspecting. Tony had _no_ idea if what he was about to do was going to work, and it seemed like the stupidest idea in theory. But Tony was all about theory. Theory, and proof.

“With all the sporting you do,” Tony said, looked at the ellipsoid in his hand and weighed it mentally. “I think you’ll understand when I say this.” And he paused, raised an eyebrow again. " _Go long._ ”

Then, without a warning of better conviction, Tony used his might and hurled the football at Peter’s head. For a solid item, it propelled linearly and strongly, without curvature or immediate dip.

Peter didn’t duck, or vacate the path of the ball. He didn’t grab it, or hold his hands up in reflex to dim the impact. He didn’t even let it hit him.

Instead, like a telekinetic ghoul, he extended his right arm, and protruding from the orange wristband came the white lattice. It immediately stopped the ball in its flight, held it there for a moment as Peter let out an uneasy cry beneath a pained face and slightly-upturned pupils. And then, almost instantaneously, the webbed limb retracted into his wrist, dropped the golden weight onto the floor with a heavy wallop swallowed by the thin rug. Peter regained his normality, stumbled backwards. He was breathing stronger than before, eyebrows slanted in fright, bewilderment, strain.

“Well,” Tony said, widened his eyes at the insensate false-ball on the ground. “Looks like I was right.”

“Why?” Peter began, unable to get the words out. “Why would you _do_ that?"

“Why did _you_ do _that?”_ Tony asked back, gestured to the hall. “You could’ve just—oh, I don’t know— _moved_ out of the way.”

Peter said nothing. He looked frantically around on the floor, and then at the thing he had just halted. His eyes broadened in a realisation personal to him: he hadn’t passed out.

“Nice catch, anyway. Explains the whole _eighties wristband_ situation you got going on.” Tony returned his hands to his pockets, made the whole situation seem nonchalant. “You gonna tell me what that thing is?”

Peter flicked his gaze up to Tony, readjusted his sleeves, still heaving. “It’s… It’s nothing.”

“Looks like a very painful nothing.”

He remained silent.

Tony pouted an anticipating lip. “You should probably tell me—"

"I was bitten by a spider,” Peter managed in a blurt.

“A _spider?”_

“I don’t know what kind, or… or what was wrong with it,” he said, eyes racing about in comprehension. "But it’s been screwing with me ever since. I’ve been able to do _that_ ever since."

Tony, now, had his expression raised. “Holy shit.”

“But you can’t tell _anyone_.” Peter, with a pleading stare, walked closer to Tony. “ _Please_. I’m being serious. It’s… It’s just so _weird_ , and I’d be kicked out of every club I’m in. _And_ the school. And they’d, probably, send me away to—"

“Peter, you’re not weird—”

“No, but _please_ ,” Peter repeated in desperation. "I just want to be _normal_.”

_“You’ll never be normal, Stark,” Clint said. The storm cracked eldritch light to his glare, and illuminated the ring of his angered posse. “You’re not like us. You think you’re higher.”_

Tony’s face screwed almost in offence. He found himself pointing to his chest. The face of his pacer shone bluer than ever. “Do you think _this_ is normal?”

Peter looked down at it, rumpled his face in confusion. “I—"

“Do you think having a device inside you that both _keeps you alive_ and _shoots lasers_ is considered normal?”

He pointed a shaky finger at it. “That… that can _do_ that?”

“Well, when I wire it up to,” Tony said. Then he exhaled, put his hands on his hips, stared straight at Peter. “Being like everyone else, especially _here_ , is the biggest drag you could ever wish upon yourself."

“Says _you_.” Peter extended an explaining hand. “You’re… You're _Tony Stark_. You’re set to inherit the _biggest_ tech company in the world. Your father—"

“Turned me into a cyborg,” Tony said directly, eyes wide but simple. “He turned me into a _cyborg_. Into _R2-D2_.”

Peter put his hand down awkwardly.“ _C-3PO_ , actually,” he muttered, “would be more appropriate.”

And then there went Tony's odd look.

“But why’d he do it?” Peter asked quietly.

“Because I got myself into some trouble.” Tony gave a considering shrug. “And, because, all things happen for a reason.”

Peter looked down, thought himself into hiding. Tony pointed at him, brought him back. “Peter, _your thing_ happened for a reason.”

And, perfectly, the chorus sounding from within the chapel froze, left the two in silence. That, barren of voice, was Peter’s part. This was his cue. And all things did, indeed, happen for a reason.

Tony believed he had communicated enough to Peter, who stood timid and equally ashamed and a bit wobbly from all the exertion and intimidation. Satisfied, he nodded, began to back out in the same way he did before to retrieve the football, but this time now towards the adjoining hallway and to the exit.

But before he disappeared, he stopped, addressed Peter with both casualty and purpose.

“I hang out at the engineering house, should you need a little more _normal_ in your life. Stop by, maybe.”

Tony then turned around properly, gave his back to the situation, and walked out. What a businessman he was.

Peter straightened again his sleeve mouths, let them oddly envelope his orange wrist bands, and fixed promptly his vest. His lower right forearm, from which his webbing had come, throbbed lightly. Peter ran a hand atop his hair, smoothened it, and proceeded weakly for the chapel’s interior again.

He wouldn’t go to the engineering facility.

_Would he?_

~ ~ ~

In the lab, white and clean and almost empty (save for a few students working overtime on individual projects, like himself), Bruce was tiredly losing interest in his work. He had his cheek resting in the palm of his propped up arm, watched a distilling apparatus drop slowly liquid into a flask, and that just so happened to be a most uneventful pastime. It was quiet and clinical. It was boring.

The large stretch of window indicating the forefront of the room usually showcased students traversing the hallway outside, and that happened to be an adequate distraction. Considering school had ended for the day, there was particularly no one in commute except for that of an odd teacher. Bruce put his focus on the window to take count of passers-by, planning to begin at the next individual he saw. It would probably just be one for the rest of the early evening. Or two.

The next individual, however, was a blazer-wearing, _tie-lost_ student. He looked at his watch to discern the time of the moment, lifted his sleeve up to see the face, and scolded himself mentally for not wearing a watch with a brief shake of the head. And he continued on.

Bruce noticed quickly, before the student disappeared to the edges of the window, a startling _oceanic glow_ under his school shirt, contained to that of a small dish at the mid of his chest. Maybe it was because Bruce had been looking at his experiment for the better of a few hours—which worked with liquid that was also blue—that his memory was bleeding things together, but he definitely saw it.

He raised an eyebrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introduced Peter properly here (and Bruce _not_ as properly)! I'm really excited for the rest of the characters to become regulars too. Chapters are getting a bit longer each update, but I'm sure they'll become more consistent in size once all the introductions are out of the way.
> 
> Hope you're enjoying so far! <3 :)


	4. Chapter 4

Midday presented dust-coloured overhead, a tinge of yellow knocking to permeate cotton ball clouds, and—stood atop the first-storey roof of the facility—Steve and Peter and Tony. The latter was holding a sandwich.

“So you’re sure a spider bit you?” Steve asked.

Tony chewed on bread. “He’s said _yes_ every time you’ve asked."

Peter nodded, felt the wind up there slap his face. “Yes."

“And now you’ve made him say it again,” Tony muttered, tipped his head in _well there goes that._

After being propositioned in the halls of the chapel,Peter hadn’t considered with fervent seriousness to take up Tony’s offer of association. He was content in shrouding his untoward ability from existence, treating it as a soil beneath that which was acceptable in routine life. Tony Stark didn’t understand this; he was a billionaire’s child, sporting something unvaried from what his tech-accustomed lineage was usually linked to. Odd, yes, but not entirely unusual.

Peter, instead, wasn’t normal in _any_ state of reference, whether that be his own or others. He was a horror movie.

But Peter was also quite alone in all of his unusualness, and the engineering facility was an intriguing face staring out at him from the school’s chair edge. Being half a year new himself, his friends weren’t something he'd consider them so. Peter believed referring to them sounded less jarring (and much more _real_ ) if they were called his teammates, or club mates; his _peers_. Something told Peter that—beneath trying to prove himself—joining his multitude of extracurriculars was to forge connections, and as many as he could to distract from their quality. But Peter knew all the nervous laughing and disguised enjoyment and depthless conversations would let up in finality. He wished he had something a bit more.

When he had decided to approach Tony and Steve in the facility, an existence of relatability seemed to have been waiting for him.

Although, Tony Stark’s idea of acquaintanceship differed quite fantastically from the standard.

“Where’d you get the, uh, sandwich from?” Peter asked. Steve narrowed his eyes at the squashed bread between Tony’s grasp.

“ _Jesus_ , Peter,” Tony began, took another bite. “I understand you’re used to the cafeteria's black lettuce and _blue-label croutons_ , but can a man enjoy his plebeian fodder without judgement?

“We’ve been standing on the roof of the facility for five minutes, Tony,” Steve said, looked at his watch. “Are we going to do this thing now?”

"Right." Tony swallowed his mouthful hard, like the revelation of what they had gathered to do came upon him. He turned to Peter properly. “You said the only things that came with the bite,” Tony said, circled a finger in gesture to his wrists, “was the webbing, and the—"

“Agility,” Peter said. “I’m much better at… doing stuff. I’m faster. _Real_ fast. Much better on my feet.”

Tony nodded, took another bite. He brought his free hand to his hip, looked out at the grey-dulled reach of green openness and the distant peek of the school’s main buildings, and felt like somewhat of a mad genius. “It’s time to put the two together.”

Steve crossed his arms. “How’s he going to do that?”

“Simple.” Tony pointed at a tapered roof embellishment beneath them, and the three of them looked down. “See that? Sturdy enough surface. Web onto it, jump down off the roof, and stop before touching the ground. Exercise both evils at the same time.”

Peter was nodding, nodding, nodding. Then, he shook his head into realisation. “Wait, I’m doing _what now?”_

“Tony,” Steve said, crumpled his own expression. “That’s almost fifteen feet.”

“ _Fifteen feet?”_

Tony scoffed. “And you’re basically seven.” He looked over, saw Peter’s eyes wide and anxious, and slapped his back lightly in encouragement. “It’ll be like jumping over two Steves.”

“A little bit more than that,” Steve added.

“Boy, you _really_ know encouragement, don’t you?"

Peter, looking down and over the edge, drew in fast breaths. “Tony, I… The height is… That's _insane_ —"

“Well, it was either this, _here_ ,”Tony started, pointed out towards the school’s remote infrastructure, "or jumping down from the top of that spire over there."

“Neither of those things seem like good ideas,” Steve said.

Tony seared a look into him. “Come up with better, Steve. I’d care to listen.”

“Can’t you do all of this on-ground?”

“And what use would that be?” He asked, screwed his face up. "You gotta put him in a situation that’s _really_ going to—"

“You _know_ ,” Peter blurted out, fast and acute, balled his fists in courage, and that shut Tony up. “When I agreed to come over here, I didn’t think we were going to do _this_ sort of thing. I… I thought we’d—“

“Mope around and agonise over our differences?” Tony chewed some more on his sandwich. “ _My heart can power a continent. When I get angry, I could destroy the_ spatial equivalent _of a continent_. _Boo hoo_."

Steve put his hands on his hips. “That’s one way to put it.”

"Actually doing something about these grievances, however… Controlling _them_ before they control _us…_ ” And then Tony waggled a finger. “Now _that’s_ the real therapy.”

Peter sighed, looked warily at Steve. He looked back at him, exhaled too. Something about all this mirrored what they were beginning to think Tony’s definition of therapy was: self-destruction. Carelessness. _Impulsivity._

“Sleeves up," Tony said, and could be budged no longer, “and wristbands off.”

Knowing in that moment he couldn’t fight the cause, Peter grudgingly and _hesitantly_ did as he was asked. He rolled each white sleeve up of his shirt carefully, brought to sight a blue wristband on either side.

“A different colour for each day of the week?” Tony asked mockingly.

And then, when Peter had removed the fabric from each wrist, Tony and Steve saw (in proper physicality) the strain of having his abilities. And there was mocking no longer.

The skin beneath his forearms were flared, red, hived. Towards the lower joint—in the middle of each one’s dipped path—was a small but raised laceration that poked through the skin like a vein, existing on the _outside_ rather than it usually did in. Peter held his arms upright. Steve blinked at the condition of them. So did Tony.

“Shouldn’t you be putting something on those?” Tony asked, deepened further his stare. “Like a _medicinal_ cream? Or…”

Peter breathed heavy in a determination that had briefly concocted with his fear. _Adrenaline_. He looked at his wrists. “What do I need to do again?”

It all had seemed easy enough. If Peter didn’t think about it, the pain wouldn’t be _that_ bad. And the height happened to only be two Steves. _Two._

Peter respired diligently. He closed his eyes, thought about the action, thought about how doing it wasn’t a big deal, thought about how he’d done it many times before. He focused feeling upon his right wrist and flexed his hand outward, prepared himself for the will of the web.

Tony and Steve watched immediately the rope of white lattice emerge from his wrist—like an endless, fibrous vine—and attach itself to the roof embellishment in target. It weakened Peter instantaneously, and according to his own expectation. In all his enervation, Peter swung forward in collapse, let out a low shriek as he, once again, lost sight of his absconding pupils to his head’s swallow. Steve and Tony reached out in reflex, but Peter dropped promptly off the edge of the roof, drew in his webbing without so much as an attempt in the task he had set out to do. He fell flat on the grass beneath him, luck thwarting his collision with nearby cobblestone.

At least he had completed _half_ of the exercise.

And then—if the situation couldn’t appear worser—from the side of the facility, backing the pond, came in great and unexpected timing Dr. Fury. He held a plastic goldfish bag of murky water in each hand, and tramped hurriedly up the rise of the hill and towards the portion of the house in which the three boys were, his black coat flapping enthusiastically against the movement. They were sure he’d heard all of it.

He stopped at first glance beneath them, switched eyes between Peter—laid both motionless and groaning on the ground—and Tony and Steve, who peered down at the sophomore with wide eyes and different versions of _oh, shit!_ communicated through their frozen, open poses.

“What the _hell_ did you both do?”

Tony sighed, and Steve couldn’t feign explanation. They both watched Fury kneel to Peter’s care, grab his upper arms and bring him slowly back to his feet, say things like _Does your head hurt? What about your legs? You’re going to have to give me a damn answer._ Tony still had some of his sandwich left, and so he took a bite and ruminated at the situation.

“ _Agility wavers with webbing_ ,” he said through his mouthful, thought about it. He turned to Steve. “You writing this down?”

Steve painted a good picture of concern towards Tony’s nonchalance. “Am I meant to be?”

Fury had managed to pull Peter up, who discerned finally what had happened a moment before. He began recovering quickly, much to Fury’s disbelief, reassured him with the enthusiasm of someone who _hadn’t_ just fallen off a building that he was fine ( _No, really, I’m good! I swear!_ ), and brushed his sweater vest of grass blades, pulled down swiftly his sleeves. Fury insisted otherwise, told him _like hell you are_ , and dragged him into the facility.

Tony could see that this—all of this—was going to take a while.

~ ~ ~

Back in the facility, Fury had finally gotten Peter on a stool, made him stay there until he amply recuperated under a scale of his own discretion. Peter had pleaded with Fury not to call the school nurse (and for very good reason, he had told him, but not _shown_ him), and so in negotiation he was not to go anywhere for that moment. While Fury had taken Steve to retrieve a first aid kit from the front office, Peter remained under Tony’s _unconvincing, but it’ll have to do_ supervision.

He rest his head in a hand propped up by his elbow. Across the table under which the stool belonged, Tony tapped through his shirt and onto his chest's glass face in contemplation.

“You _sure_ you’re okay?” he asked.

Peter stretched, cracked something in his back. “Yeah… surprisingly.”

“God, I’m really not cutout for this, am I?” Tony asked no one in particularly, though maybe himself, and took the fingers that tapped and pulled on his lip in thought, let his leg bounce.

Peter fidgeted a bit in the stool. “Maybe we shouldn’t…Look, we don’t _really_ have to keep testing me out—”

“Oh, no, we’re not easing up now.” Tony softly slapped the table in emphasis. “But this isn’t my area of expertise. Interesting, yes, but not self-serving."

“What isn't?”

“Biology,” Tony said. Then, he rambled. “I do know quite a bit about the topic, don’t get me wrong. I just prefer the… mechanical side of things, you know? That’s my science. That’s the Stark thing.” He shook his head into a distant ponder. “And first it was Steve, coming to me with an organic problem. A _colossal-ass_ organic problem, and I don’t know shit about behavioural ordeals. Then, it was just sheer luck that I found you. That’s two things in a row. Two non-mechanical things.” Tony let up again, went silent for a moment, deliberated. “And my _heart_ … That’s…"

Peter squinted. Was this what a genius in mediation looked like, talking to himself?

Tony looked up, and it was as though he had swallowed dutifully a spoonful of pride and let it flush through his face. He knocked at the dark wood surface of the table beneath a balled hand, displayed pursed lips and a surrendered, dropped stare. “I need you to find someone for me.”

“But, Fury said—"

“Once he comes back,” Tony clarified. He waited a bit, dithered in his mind, and then narrowed his eyes in reluctant resolution. Peter waited, also. He felt almost urged to ask who, but Tony eventually said the name. It came out sad and admiral and reminiscent, all at once. “ _Bruce Banner._ ”

“I… I don’t think I know who that is,” Peter said.

“Old friend of mine,” Tony elaborated, “who just so happens to have _a lot_ more knowledge than me on all this.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “And you want _me_ to ask him for help?”

“Well, we’re not talking. He’d never listen if I showed up and started making unwarranted demands.” Tony crumpled his expression, scolded Peter with preliminary warning. “Don’t make unwarranted demands.”

“I… I won’t."

“Be polite. And don’t mention my name until he’s in full agreement. He won’t be able to back out once he’s said yes.” Tony tipped his head in consideration, thought back to a past time. “He’s morally-subservient like that."

“And you aren’t?”

Tony gave him a look.

“ _Just_ a question,” Peter clarified, raised his hands in defence. He stood slowly from the stool, let his arms accomodate the push. “What, exactly, am I looking for?”

“Senior. Dark hair, shiny waves. Kinda ruffled.” Tony gestured an unkempt hairstyle with his hands. “Trust me, you’ll feel this looming sense of crestfallen scrutiny the minute you lock eyes. Almost like you’ve messed up before you even knew what on _._ ” Then, he pondered out into the distance. “Kinda thinking now that, maybe, that stare was only ever reserved for me.”

“And you said knowledge on _this_ sort of stuff, right? Biology?” Peter asked. "So I’m guessing he’d be in—”

“The labs. Always.” Tony scoffed. “I’d say I could be mistaken, but I know I’m not.”

Peter nodded. And then Tony thought of something convenient, but unusual. He crossed his arms, eyed Peter like he was a circuit in his physics class: simple-looking, but complex in their solving.

“Sort of surprised you’re agreeing to all this right off the bat, Peter.”

Peter traced a circle or two in the table’s wood. “Look… As much as I _really_ don’t want to throw myself off a building again, I’m still pretty curious about… about all this, you know? I don’t wanna live in the dark."

Tony nodded. “Hey, I get it. I’ve been meaning to do this all for myself, too, but _time._ ” He stifled a laugh. "And _other weirdos_ needing my help."

Peter gave a nervous chuckle. “I’m also kinda scared to say no to a senior with a _robo-heart.”_

“Good,” Tony said. "Respect your technologically-enhanced elders.”

The sound of the entrance creak signified promptly Fury and Steve’s return. They appeared at the bifold arch opening into the facility, the latter holding with two fists a large, handled first aid kit decayed from decades prior. Fury pointed at Peter, who was still lingering around the table. “ _Nuh-uh_. You put your behind in that seat.”

Peter looked at Tony, conflicted by the presence of either authorities, and reluctantly sat again.

~ ~ ~

The labs were particularly quiet at that time of day (and were particularly quiet in general), apart from a few dedicated students who added nothing more than breathing to the silence. At first scan of them all, Peter pondered one of them to be Bruce. Though Tony had said this was basically a home to him, it would be favourable if he wasn’t, say, out for lunch at that moment. Then, Peter would have to lead a goose chase. And he _definitely_ wasn’t capable of doing that.

Like all laboratories happened to be, the school’s bio-science division was bright and soundless and cold, smelled like the distant future and chaste hospitals. The side windows displayed a mute, impending storm, which managed to reflect upon the lab and made it glow painfully like a colourless asteroid. Peter stepped inside, and felt an immediacy of misplacement. There was a sense of character and present almost a feeling of encompassment in the engineering facility when he had first decided to visit. This place was devoid of something similar.

While a few students managed to look up at him from the potency of their concentration, none of them gave him any particular thought, which definitely didn’t help Peter’s case. He gulped in a questioning stasis of what he had to do next. Peter looked around, nervously. What was he looking for, again? _Senior. Dark hair, shiny waves. Kinda ruffled._ That should be easy. There weren’t even upwards of ten in the room, and the lab benches were numerous enough for one student each, with a few spare.

Towards the back corner of the labs, with his own back to Peter, was a head down—engrossed like the rest of them—of brown, placed hair succeeding the hunch of his lab coat. He faced the front of tall equipment with glass tubes and liquid, scratched the mid of his scalp as he wrote down observations he took as he looked up momentarily at it, and then back down. Peter decided that if _this_ didn’t happen to be Bruce, then he’d have to look elsewhere; he noticed the only other few in the room donned, coincidentally, blonde or red hair.

Peter walked up to him, stood by the side of the bench, and cleared messily his throat. The student in question continued to write for a moment, before glancing up.

“Are you… Are you Bruce Banner?”

“Yes?” he said, furrowed the midst of his eyebrows in confusion.

And _this_ was the scrutiny that Tony was talking about: an unspoken expectation of explanation (he had only said one word, though it was very much apparent) which Peter sensed came from interrupting him. He looked around, dimmed his voice to work below the silent room. “Uh… Principal Coulson wishes to see you in his office.”

“Right now?”

Peter blinked, fidgeted as he did often. “I’ve been sent to take you there, so…”

Bruce breathed, thought for a moment with his pen to his mouth, and then decided to stand. He tightened a leaver on the set in front of him, and placed his pen to his notebook that displayed lines and shapes of illegible, blue scribbling. Shrugging off his lab coat, he stepped in front of Peter and set for the door. Peter promptly followed behind him, saying nothing more.

Once down the hall, and Bruce had folded his coat in two halves, Peter spoke redirection.

“Actually, uh, through here,” he said behind him, and pointed towards an empty corridor that branched from the path.

Bruce exhaled in inconvenience. “Okay."

Peter continued to trail him, squeezed tightly his fists in a nervous anticipation. He didn’t know _when_ to do it, or _how,_ or if his subsequent reaction would ruin the entire endeavour, and, also, just _why_ Tony made him do it. Steve seemed like the kind to be able to persuade with stunning conviction, and had that stern face and posture of his that made everything he uttered seem official. What was Peter to do, in that moment, if Bruce said no? He was as convincing as a rabbit was of its grit. Nothing would come of his subsequent appeal to negotiate. 

“Did Coulson say, specifically, what he needed me for?” Bruce asked, and had stopped to turn around. Peter almost didn’t notice this in all his worrying, and halted himself immediately to prevent a collision.

“ _No_. No, he didn’t,” Peter muttered. Bruce pouted in a quiet acceptance, and went to turn to proceed walking.

“Wait,” Peter then said, held his hand up in pause. “Principal Coulson… He doesn’t, _actually_ , need you.”

Bruce furrowed his eyebrows. “What?”

And then Peter took a breath, aimed for clarity.“My… My name’s Peter Parker. I was told you could help me.”

“With?” Bruce asked in a poised, slight frustration.

Again, like he had done before that day, Peter—with great deliberation—rolled up his sleeve. Bruce watched on, puzzled, and gripped his lab coat. Peter moved up the blue wristband, closed his eyes, and flexed the tendons of his forearm.

The webbing emerged quickly, hit a spot on the corridor's tiles in front of him, and he let it go on no longer than a second. Peter managed to retract it before the wailing came, and lurched in the weariness of short, but strenuous labour. Bruce staggered back, had his eyes broad, and Peter was still breathing heavy when he had managed to quiver a lip, hand pointing the spot of the webbing’s mark in _what the hell was that?_

“Not too long ago,” Peter managed. “I was bitten."

Bruce shook his head with an astounded shiver. “By what? An _alien_?”

“A spider, actually.”

“A _spider_ did that to you?” Bruce reiterated, needed to make sure he was hearing it all properly. Peter brought his wrist up again, showed Bruce the raised erythema atop the arm.

“I wasn’t actually _bitten_ in this area, but…” Peter let him gawk at it a moment—a hesitant reach of the neck over in examination—and then rolled the wristband back atop his lower joint, brought his sleeves down with a quick jut. “Yeah.”

Bruce straightened himself out again, gave a few blinks in effort to understand, and swallowed. “Does… Does that hurt?”

“Yes,” Peter said. His heaving began to subside. “A lot.”

And now Bruce was perplexed, dreaming. He had been monitoring his oil distillation project for that past week without so much as a single interruption. How was it that, unpredicted, a sophomore lured him out of his focus, brought him elsewhere, and showed him something so _anomalous_ (more than what Bruce was used to) that his usual work became nothing more than a brief fragment of scientific interest? Of, almost, amateurish nature? All this occurring was almost upon his unspoken request for activity, tumult, _something._

Now, his concentration was past him.

“I… I don’t know what to say.” Bruce looked up at Peter from a distant thought. He closed his expression with questioning eyes. “Who said I could help you?”

Peter twisted his sleeves around, removed his stare from the expectant senior standing across from him. In reality, it was either to tell him at that moment in time—rip the bandaid off with immediacy—or string him along until eventual decline of interest, or, really, never. “ _Uh…_ ” He hung onto it, closed his eyes almost. “Tony.”

Bruce almost did a double-take. “As in _Stark?”_

“He’s been trying to help me himself,” Peter began, “but—"

“He’s gotten stuck, hasn’t he?” Bruce scoffed, looked away in incredulity. He took proper hold of his folder lab coat, put it over his own forearm, and gave an apologetic, frustrated expression before attempting to skirt around Peter. “I’m sorry. I’m not getting into this again.”

Peter turned around quickly, began his inevitable plea. “Please, Bruce. I need—”

“A _doctor_. You need a doctor. Not two teenagers who…” He weakened the thought, recalibrated his direction. “…who are under qualified."

Peter shifted a moment. “Why aren’t you two talking anymore?"

Bruce sighed, paused. “Peter, the sons of businessmen don’t understand friendship.”

“But—"

“You’re _always_ either the assistant, or the experiment,” Bruce said. Then, he crossed his arms, reminisced into territory he’d have rather stayed away from, quietened his voice. “I’m going to take a guess and say he didn’t tell you what he did.”

Peter stayed silent to hear it.

“I’ve helped him with many things before, you know. _Scientific_ things,” Bruce began. “And most of his conjectures are… unorthodox, to say the least. I mean, he’s a Stark; they’re ingenious people. Their thoughts—their _trials_ —don’t make sense.” He huffed. “But the regular person needs some sort of explanation for peace of mind, even if it doesn’t reveal the entire truth of their genius. It’s practice. Gets people off your back."

Peter tried to understand what he was trying to convey.

“He got me involved in something I couldn’t explain. A stupid experiment,” Bruce continued. “We were both suspended for a week, which... It’s not much, I know.” Then he shook his head, scornful and dismal, put a hand out to explain. “But it’s about what they put on your record.”

Peter thought a moment. “How bad is it?"

“Pre-med at Harvard is off the table. For good,” Bruce said with great solemnity. "They’ll never take in a student with suspension on their file."

And at the tone of both defeat and undaunted resolution, Peter could tell he had lost. It was one thing to argue assistance, but to request Bruce to neglect something like _that_ —to even attempt conciliation without equal context—in favour of his own reasons, was something Peter wasn’t able, in his heart, to do. He found himself nodding at this, didn’t even have to make it verbal.

“I’m sorry, Peter,” Bruce said in closing. “Medical help. That’s what you need.”

He left Peter stuttering silently at the inability to argue any further.

~ ~ ~

That following afternoon, Bruce had concluded, finally, his work in the lab. There was a joy in his short step, and always was when a long-hauled experiment came to a close.He had just finished putting his equipment back in storage and was loading his book bag, humming lightly, when the lab’s door sounded entrance behind him. Bruce perked attention immediately, and expected his teacher. He was eager to show his results, after all. If he didn’t have to wait until class the next day to do so, then the afternoon was chilling even better than he thought.

“Sir, I’ve just—“

But when he turned to face his teacher, he met eyes someone else. A _younger_ someone else—blazer and shirt and _no_ tie—with a blue, whirring glow shining from his remorseful heart and into the room in which Bruce had just closed the lights. It illuminated upon him a pained, calm expression.

And it was Tony.

Bruce couldn't manage a further word.

The former sighed, stared at his old friend. “Looks like Peter's heartfelt plea failed to penetrate,” he begun, “and so, now, I’m offering monetary bribes. To whom should I make out the cheque? The _Dean of Harvard?"_

Bruce turned back around to finish packing his bag. “Not funny, Tony."

Tony tipped his head, watched him. “How’ve you been?”

“Busy.”

He tapped a nearby desk in waiting. "The first time we speak in a _year_ and you couldn’t care to elaborate past _busy?”_

Bruce, finished, slung his bag across his shoulder. Holding the strap, he turned around to Tony. “Why should I?” he said, glared pins and screws and broken flasks. “You don’t care how I’ve been. You just want something from me. Again, Tony.”

And Tony examined Bruce for the first time in a while. He was tired, sad at the sight of him, with eyes of umber that were now just _begging_ Tony to leave him alone. The same hairstyle he had kept since they’d fallen out had his hewn face sat underneath, expression folded in frustration. He wore just the school shirt, no overwear, with the white fabric split into two halves by his long tie. And, really, nothing had outwardly changed. Bruce was still Bruce. 

The only thing different, in that moment, was a potent dislike for Tony brewing beneath it all.

“I know you think I’m doing this for whatever selfish reason,” Tony said, "but it’s not true.”

Bruce crossed his arms. “Past experience doesn’t convince me otherwise."

Tony then went quiet, walked closer to him. He breathed and ruminated and went almost sombre, standing across from someone he used to consider his _closest_ friend. “Things have changed, Bruce.” He looked down at his chest, felt atop the cotton of his shirt and gripped lightly the bright face. He gestured to it with his eyes, made sure Bruce could see it. “You know Barton did this to me?”

Bruce squinted at it. “Clint Barton?”

“None other,” Tony said. And then Bruce flashed confusion, and so he explained further. “It’s a pacemaker. Fancy, I know.”

“Tony—"

“It’s okay.” He glanced down again, pouted as though he were checking a watch for the time. “Colour's quite nice.”

Bruce found himself plagued with disbelief, with a sort of gloom that a friend has for another’s misfortune. “What the _hell_ did he do?”

_And it was all just shattering, numbing, explosive, bursting his insides in and squeezing out tears, breath, pain, heat, light, colour, the world, his parents, from a face that anyone could tell had just been conquered._

“Caught me on a bad day,” Tony said, chuckled. And it was sad.

They stood in silence for a period or so of thought. Bruce couldn’t find the words to proceed with, and Tony refused to for the sake of the unspoken sincerity between them. It was—more so that a re-meeting—a moment of two friends comprehending the barren lives of the other without speech, without comment, and he thought it needed to be savoured. Bruce played with his pants, looked down. Tony held a hand on his backpack strap, like an anchor of the present. After a minute more, he put his hands in his pocket.

“Though there _is_ something a bit odd about it,” Tony said. “The device powering my heart.”

“How so?”

“Packs way more punch than it’s delivering. The potential is _astounding_.” And then he pointed a finger. “But I’ve managed to harness the excess.”

“Hold on.” Bruce held up his hands. “By working on yourself?”

Tony raised an eyebrow.

"On the device that keeps your heart going? _Really_ , Tony?"

“Well, a world without Bruce Banner is a blind one,” he admitted. "A stupid one."

And then Bruce laughed, looked down.

“Shot a laser through a student the other day, too,” Tony said, shrugged.

“ _Tony.”_

“He’s still standing.”

Bruce shook his head. “And how did you manage that?"

Tony tapped on the blue glow. “Long story.”

At this point, the tension in the room had calmed to a slow murmur of comrades in banter, and it slowed even further to silence, again, with Tony and Bruce staring at each other. Something unstated in the moment called for further sentiment. Bruce was not indebted such, and so Tony dipped his head, thought about it, and spoke finally.

“That _thing_ , from a year ago…” Tony shook his head. "I never meant to put you in any shit, Bruce. I hope you know that.”

“Tony—"

“No,” he said, stopped him. “You deserve an apology. And, so, I’m sorry.”

Bruce sighed. Tony took that as cue to continue.

“And, you know what? If you can’t get into Harvard, I won’t go to MIT. Simple as that.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to do that for me—"

“It’s a fair bargain.” Tony pursed his lips in consideration.“And I _still_ happen to be campaigning for your help with all this, so…” 

Bruce gripped the strap of his bag again, and huffed. He looked at Tony, who stood with a present equanimity, but Bruce knew a desperation lingered somewhere deeper than his composure. And Bruce, above sticking to general morality (like Tony had mentioned), possessed something called _empathy_ , and the sight of a ultramarine light—a blue eye—reminding him of a heartache Tony experienced at his absence, prompted him to want to give something in return.

“Alright, Tony.”

Tony perked up. “Yes?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Bruce said in finality, in acceptance. “Damn you and your entrepreneurship."

He grinned. “Odd word to refer to my charm.”

And just like that, Bruce Banner was back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to reiterate that there will _definitely_ be pairing activity! There's just a bit of narrative context to lay down first.
> 
> Also, tags will begin to change once they become a bit more relevant, and that includes new characters. :)


	5. Chapter 5

Tony attempted to recline on the hard chair he was seated at. With obvious reason, it didn’t budge.

“There a good reason you called me in here, Coulson?”

He had been pulled out of class ( _Calculus Three_ , to be precise, and so it was really no bother, but anytime Coulson needed him he liked to feign irritation) and was situated opposite from his principal in his office. Coulson had an old desk, large and rough and made of decayed wood, with files atop to confirm he was official in whatever manner. Tony knew the desk had been placed judiciously, to his left, in front of the slim windows to shine an emotional glow of rain on Coulson, give him some relatability. But, then again, with his grey suit and hands interlaced, he looked nothing more than bloodless faculty.

And, while at the summit of them all, Tony believed his authority was laughable.

“I’m just checking up on you,” Coulson said, gave a formal smile.

“Ah, right.” Tony nodded. “Father’s orders.”

“Your teachers have made note that you’ve gotten back into the work quite quickly.”

“I’m a fast learner."

Coulson looked at him with a bit more intent. “I’ve also been informed you’ve been spending a considerable amount of time in our new engineering facility.”

Tony cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t, exactly, use the word _new_.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s adequate."

Coulson brought a questioning finger to his mouth. “Any particular reason as to why you’re frequenting the space, though?”

“Well, I mean, yeah,” Tony said. “It’s the first instance I’ve seen this school even _acknowledge_ mechanical science, and not treat it like some whimsical, futile endeavour.”

“We’ve never expressed that,” Coulson rebutted. “We attend to our divisions based on our proposed budget. Financing is released in sectors, and we have a timeline as to what departments acquire what—"

Tony waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. I understand how money works, Coulson.”

His principal ceased his explanation. “Well, are you working on an extended project, by any chance?”

“What?”

“With all your time down there, I mean."

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Physics homework, mainly.”

Coulson nodded. He pointed a pen at a sheet on his desk, looked at it. “And... you’ve been keeping up with Steve Rogers?”

Tony tried to peer over at the paper. “You ask _why?”_

“Well, we don’t see much of him either.” Coulson looked up again. “And we’ve been expecting his participation in sport, community service, the _Junior ROTC_ —"

“Junior ROTC? I _knew_ Rogers was a military kid."

“He wasn't.”

“Oh.” Tony crossed his arms. “Well, him not doing those things isn’t _entirely_ my fault."

“I’m not saying it is,” Coulson said. Then, he sorted through a shallow stack of paper to his right, examined it. “While we’re on the topic of extracurriculars, however, I’d like to run something by you.”

“If this is about teaching the freshmen robotics, I refuse,” Tony said. “Couldn’t care _less_ how good it’d look on my CV. They’re animals.”

Coulson joined his hands again. “Tony, after your…incident, it occurred to us that it is indeed a pertinent issue many students, with ample talent, are being preoccupied by lesser ventures.”

“By _lesser_ ventures, do you mean blocking kicks to the stomach?” Tony asked, “or video games?”

Coulson breathed out through the nose. “We have an initiative in mind that we’d like to implement. Something that pools skilled students in one group, promotes them to other young people who may be misdirected, and ultimately aims to keep an entire generation of kids _focused._ ”

“And, let me guess…” Tony pointed to himself.

“Of course."

“Why do I not like the way that sounds?” he said, lifted an eyebrow.

“Let me explain,” Coulson began. "We’ve been in ongoing communication with _multiple_ larger and well-accredited institutions on the basis of post-high-school acceptance. Yale, Harvard, Columbia: these days, they want their alumni confirmed half a decade before their application.”

Tony deliberated. “That’s… not very odd.”

“However, we’ve been told they’re seeking to invest in making ample young individuals not _just_ Ivy League prospects, but _social figures_. Stamps of their brand of graduate.”

“And you want to sift our kids out to them?” Tony asked.

“Through our school, of course. In conjunction with their endorsement, we want to present the wider world with a team of justified young leaders who will, inevitably, go on to become globally-distinguished examples.” Coulson locked his hands again, stared at Tony attentively. “And I think it would be _unintelligent_ to attempt to assemble such a bunch without yourself included. At the forefront.”

Tony stared at his principal, thought about it a moment. Their school was already that of a prestigious kind, full of the successors of moguls and CEOs and other affluent, unattainable positions that someone without blood relation could not attain. Tony was one of these: an inheritor. He didn’t need to exist on the basis of being defined by a college—defined by his _high school_ through association, nevertheless—and be locked within its grasp to be considered statured. He was, already, a Stark. Why he’d need a leg-up in the manner his principal was suggesting seemed… ill-fitting. Suspicious, almost. Tony could sense it.

“I think I’ll have to pass, Coulson."

His principal grew incredulous. “And why is that?”

Tony comically scrunched up his nose, whipped around his hand as if sensing aroma. “The stench of disingenuity, for some reason, is hindering my ability to come to a decision.”

“There's not a single disingenuous thing about what we’re trying to do here.”

“Why do you need _me_ at the head of it all?” Tony asked. “To pose distraction with a pretty face? Feign legitimacy?”

“We’d have no reason to do that—"

“Then why does something tell me that my involvement would work purely on your advantage?” Tony, now, interlaced his fingers to compete formality, quirked an eyebrow too. “Prove me wrong."

His principal exhaled curtly. “We want our students to succeed. Yourself included.”

“Of course,” Tony said. He dimmed his voice slyly. “But I don’t need the extra help.”

“Tony—"

“I could cough right now, and Yale would come knocking.” He tipped his head. “I’d prefer to go elsewhere, though. You happened to get MIT in on your little deal, by any chance?”

“Could you think, conversely, about the other young people you’d be inspiring?”

Tony scoffed. “Oh _please_ , Coulson. You can’t just show the fruits and hide the labor. The youth are smarter than that. You’ll be tempting no one.”

“It’s a start in the right direction,” his principal said.

“It’s a false expectation,” Tony decided. Then, he lifted himself out of his chair. “And I don’t want to entertain it.”

At that, Coulson almost let himself stutter in desperation. “Mr. Stark, _please_ consider before you overtly decline this offer.”

“If it weren’t already presenting itself a load of shit, I’m far too busy doing other things,” Tony said, reached for his bag next to the chair. “Like, for example, entertaining the cadet you set onto me, and ensuring the engineering facility is never a day vacated. Considering you’ve managed to turn the entire school off the subject through your neglect, I’m the only one ever there.” He looked up at him promptly. “I’m thinking _gratitude_ may be the more appropriate offer, with all the things I’m currently doing for you considered."

And then Coulson breathed. “The agreement your father assented—"

“Oh, I know for a _fact_ it doesn’t include obligations like this,” Tony said bluntly. Standing, he overturned his hand, brought it down to Coulson’s eye view. “I’ll pass the Junior ROTC notice to Steve.”

“Tony—"

But he stood there, unwavering, hand out in waiting. He wasn’t going to budge.

In that moment, Coulson had no other choice than to oblige by Tony’s jurisdiction. He handed him a blue pamphlet he had placed from his desk, pursed his lips.

~ ~ ~

Now back at the facility, Tony found himself among varying activity.

Bruce had Peter sat on a stool at one of the tables, hands held firmly on the edge of the surface, with an odd-looking drink beneath his dipped, weary head. A chemistry set—something small, not too extravagant—was set up to the right of him, with a row of small instruments placed routinely next to the case. Bruce was attending to it with great focus.

On a different table, Steve had his large frame hunched—in his usual grey sweater—over some schoolwork. Every so often he’d flick his gaze up at Peter and Bruce in interest, and then return promptly to his small conglomerate of books to continue working on whichever class he was behind. In the same manner, he would turn his head with same routine around to address Tony, who was sat behind him at a different table and threw pencils at his back like soft, though annoying, projectiles. At the throwing of a rather large pamphlet, however, Steve decided to address him.

“Yes?”

“You’re offending me,” Tony said. “You can’t just take up residence in _my_ house and refuse to speak to me.”

“Not your house, Tony,” Bruce called over.

“Oh, but I came across it first. I’m the honorary founder."

“I’m just trying to focus on my work," Steve then said, tilted his head back to him. He also thought it wouldn’t be wise to bring up that _he_ did the ignoring, usually.

“How hard even _is_ Algebra Two?” Tony asked. “Don’t they just make you do your multiplication tables?”

Steve disregarded that. He turned back to his book

“Coulson said you didn’t go to military school,” Tony then said.

Steve raised his brows. “Which is true. I didn’t.”

“Bullshit, Rogers," Tony began, waved his hands around in gesture of his figure. “ _All this_ you got going on doesn’t indicate the puny gym class of public education.”

Steve stayed quiet. Tony continued to prod.

“And, I’ve been thinking about it, too. You can’t tell me the whole g _o nuts, throw stuff_ thing isn’t the result of weird militant conditioning.”

_“Repeat!”_

_He bellowed with hoarse lack of breath: “This we’ll—!"_

At that, a dull but sudden pain throbbed in Steve’s head. He winced silently, put a hand to his right temple.

Tony squinted at him. “You good, Rogers?”

“Yeah, I’ve just… I’ve been getting small headaches all day."

“How bad on a scale of one-to- _kill-me?”_ Tony asked curiously.

Steve moved his head back to him again, index finger still pressed into the side of his face. “I don’t know how I’d be able to answer that.”

And, just as Tony—after noticing the truth of Steve’s denseness—was to explain the jest of his question, the both of them were drawn out of their conversation by the notice of a swaying figure to the side of their focus.

Peter, under Bruce’s instruction, had been exercising his webbing out onto the same spot on the table’s surface, and was now sat weak and wobbly. He was pale—clammy with his eyes dimmed—and happened to resemble with great replication the white mist of rain outside. In his uniform he shook, almost, in a sense of physical surrender. Peter had even managed, for that past hour, to swallow the noise that came with the exertion for the sake of everyone in the facility, and it was taking its evident toll. Bruce was aware of the strain. He eyed him warily.

“I—” Peter began against a dry mouth. “I don’t know... if I can continue.”

“I know, Peter. I know. Just _once_ more, though, and then you’re done,” Bruce said. He pointed to the cup in front of him. “Keep drinking that.”

It was a glass of _something_ , as equally thick in consistency as it was the muted colour of the sun the students at the school had surely forgotten. Peter picked it up with great struggle, managed to look at it through drooping eyes.

“What even _is_ this?”

“Fibre and electrolyte supplement,” Bruce said, prepped some tools on the table. “Well, homemade, at least. It’s the best I could do.”

Peter eyed it, and it slipped almost through his fingers. “What, exactly, is it made of?"

"Orange juice, two tablespoons of the cafeteria’s rice pudding, five pinches of salt—"

“Oh, _great_. I think I’m going to be sick—"

“… and Red Bull,” Tony added from behind them.

Bruce turned around to him with wide eyes. He took immediately the glass from Peter’s fragile grasp, examined it oddly. Then, he furrowed his eyebrows.

“Why, Tony?”

He shrugged. “Been keeping him upright so far, hasn’t it?”

Peter then took some deep breaths, waited a bit. He nodded shakily, perked himself up at a sudden whim of small recovery. “Can… Can we do it now?” he asked. "I’m getting my second wind. I don’t know for how long, though.”

Bruce took quickly a small instrument from the array he had out, stood next to him in expectancy. “Alright. Whenever you’re ready.”

Peter focused a moment more, heaved his shoulders and closed his eyes. He brought out his right wrist to the table, and with great pain came the web, white and strong, onto the surface for what seemed like the millionth time to Peter. Bruce pierced acutely the instrument, with its sharp head, into a spot on the fibrous lattice, and with similar immediacy Peter retracted the web again and fell forward onto the table. He had managed to catch himself with his forearms, and he hung his head in the space he left between himself and the wood. Peter breathed deeply.

“Sorry, Peter,” Bruce said, put the instrument into a small vial containing already an unrecognisable liquid. “I’m sure that last one hurt.”

He nodded infirmly. _Everything_ about it all hurt, in fact.

Tony and Steve had stood up now, and were lingering behind Peter in examination of it all. There was something _different_ about seeing someone voluntarily repeat an action of pain, as opposed to falling onto soft grass and hobbling off without injury. It plagued in them a deeper concern, and it was one that had to be grown, rather than being smacked upon them at the release of adrenaline.

“No more of _that_ for today,” Tony said, found himself with a hand on Peter’s arched shoulder.

Steve looked inquiringly at Bruce, who had the vial with the instrument in it at his eye level. He crossed his arms. “What happens now?”

“Depends.” Bruce flicked it. "Should change colour at any moment.”

“What—” Peter tried weakly. “What does that… ?”

“It’ll indicate the presence of a particular metal I’m _hopeful_ to see.”

And the liquid in the vial, between Bruce’s fingers, morphed presently into a fire; a red swirled around the lighter existence of orange smoke. He put it back onto a wooden stand next to other small glass cylinders, similarly with instruments of the same type inside of them. He wrote something down on the notepad he had opened, pointed to it with a tapping finger. Tony came over to look.

“There you go. _Iron_ ,” Bruce said simply. “Each time Peter exerts himself, brings out the web—"

“He’s losing blood,” Tony deduced, bunched his expression in thought.

“Explains a lot, like why he’s so weak.” Bruce looked at the sample. "Why it's been hurting him, too.”

Steve noticed Peter push himself up from the table with two buckling arms, stand shakily.

“Peter—"

“I… I need some air.”

“No. Nope. You’re staying seated,” Tony said, went to Peter and tried to gesture him back to the stool. “We’re going to get you some water, some _proper_ food, not that _mush in a cup_ , and—"

But Peter put his hands out, pushed past his help, shook his head. “I’ll be a moment.”

At that, he proceeded slowly around the three of them and towards the exit leading out to the back of the facility. They watched him leave, close gently the door behind him.

After a moment of silence, Steve walked from the small group of them.

“I should make sure he doesn’t—"

“Yeah."

“Good idea."

~ ~ ~

Peter was sat at a small hill mounding down the black of the pond preceding the facility. It was a still, tranquil setting, regardless of the extent of the colder air sitting above and beyond the water and surrounding him like an unwarranted hug. He had regulated his breathing, and was staring out with tired eyelids into the afternoon, when Steve approached him from his traverse over. He sat down without a word, and his figure almost hulked Peter’s own. They were quiet for only a period more.

“You know, for a sophomore, you _might_ just be the strongest of all of us,” Steve said, tried to ease him.

Peter brought his knees up, held them tight. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

Steve sighed, looked at him with that same concern he was entrapped by when they had seen him push himself into a near collapse. He waited, could see a want to explain in the narrow of Peter’s stare. And, as expected, he fulfilled it promptly.

“I told Tony I just wanted to be normal, which is true. But I also thought, _knew_ , I wanted to learn more about… about my—“ Peter paused to gain clarity. “I… I just—"

“Peter, it’s okay—”

“It isn’t,” he said, and breathed into proper explanation. “I attend this school on scholarship. All those clubs and sports and activities... I… I just do them to keep up appearances. If they—if _anyone_ , other than you guys—found out about my… I’d be—“

“No one’s going to find out.”

“But they _will_ , eventually. Bruce and Tony said it themselves: I’m losing blood.” Peter hushed dismally. "There’s only so much they can do before I’m going to need an actual doctor.”

Again, Steve exhaled them both into quiet. He thought about it, looked down into his own crossed legs. “Guess the same goes for me too.”

Peter looked at him with some confusion. “Why?"

“I have no control over what I do.” Steve said, kept his eyes on the water. They were stained with a sense of despondency. “I’m going to hurt someone. It’s almost inevitable.”

Peter huffed, looked back out into the blue day, too, with a solemn expression, and buried it into his arm to escape the cold. Then, he said something wise above his age, though not particularly unusual for how well-seasoned he was. But it was still profound. “We can’t escape our second face, can we?”

_“I can’t do this. I refuse.”_

_Steve stood angered before a desk, cluttered with pens and paperwork, and a mug was posed with stilled beverage to his left. Behind it, positioned in angle, sat a name plate. There was a title engraved in the plaque—black serif font and capital—and it belonged to the man seated ahead of it in a leather chair. He then stood, dressed dapperly in a tucked shirt and tie, and moved around to Steve. The man put his hands on his shoulders, which were smaller than his own immensely._

_“When you’re out there, you put on a second face,” the man said. “You’re not Steve. You_ are not _Steve.”_

_Steve looked around him. Now, he could see the end of the name plate with a clearer vantage._

_Stark._

_“Don’t you want to be better?” The man asked._

From within Steve came the throng of pain to the temple, and he grimaced, put his head down. Peter eyed him. “Steve?”

But Steve couldn’t talk. He couldn’t see anything, hear anything, feel _anything_ in that moment, except for the pulsating of a blackened pain around his body, engulfing him in a sort of numbness that was inarticulate. He was motionless. Nothing animated apart from his chest, in which his breathing grew deeper, faster, and everything was almost synchronous. His eyes were open, too, but not one subject nor string of thought registered with him; his pupils were at a stasis.

This was unlike him. This wasn’t him. This _was_ his second face.

And, in that moment, Peter saw the change.

He got up and ran as good as he could; without fear or tumult, and just merely to escape the situation. He understood it.

They were both doomed by that which they could not control.

~ ~ ~

In the evenings, mainly towards the end of the week, Fury would allow Tony to work until a later time. This benefited him greatly; he could put more effort into his own situation, as his days had evidently been preoccupied with the others he chose to allocate his focus to. Amongst all the chaos, his blue and _very_ bulbous chest had been waiting patiently for an opening in his time. It was thanks to Fury’s compassion that it could find one.

The warmed light of the headlamps burned sweetly into the darkened space later that day, shone with bronze tint Tony’s tools and wires and the lot of his other objects. He had been working on a brace—a simple, austere skeleton—to fit atop his chest and make easier his working, insertion, and the extraneous holdings of wires that came with his configuration. The beam pads once upon his palms he restricted spatially to his right hand, and carrying it was Tony’s best attempt at a makeshift, substandard (on Stark terms, that is) gauntlet. He desperately wanted to create another, for his left, but was low on materials, and couldn’t even properly build the one he had managed into existence. He had told Fury that he needed this metal and this tool, for the sake of his genius. Fury asked him _Why so demanding, Mr. Stark?_ and said he'd order it in. From that point on, Tony would just have to wait.

For the time being, there was not much else he could do other than tamper with what he already had.

While Tony donned his half-finished chest structure and pad enhancement—and was gazing with great scrutiny at the crystalline intricacies of his laser’s foundation—Steve appeared, as he always did, at the entering arch. It was the first time they had seen each other since the latter went to find Peter. Tony held up his right hand, aimed the gauntlet at Steve like he did the beam their first turning of acquaintanceship.

“Stand back, or bear my wrath,” he said. “And, this time, I happen to know what I’m doing.”

At the sight of Steve’s enlarged eyes, Tony dropped the hand. He grinned something short and impish, returned his focus to an area of the bench.

Steve let his tensed figure relax again. He watched Tony work, put his hands in his pockets. “You made all that in one evening?"

“Give or take. Added to it whenever I had time during the day.” Tony turned to face him. “Which, you know, is never.”

And Steve stifled a smile, which came with identifying himself the culprit. He looked down, afterwards, waiting.

“So, uh, Peter said it happened again.”

“I figured,” Steve said, and there was a plaguing embarrassment to the sigh that followed it. Then, he thought of the worse. “Did I—?”

“You’d know by the state of things if you did,” Tony affirmed. He brought a screwdriver to his hand. “And Peter's fine. Says he understands you, isn’t scared either. Honestly, I think he’s just saying that to rub it in.”

Steve looked up at him with question, but there was a hint of something else with the way his eyebrow quirked. “You were scared of me?”

Tony scoffed. “I still am. I know nothing about you.”

And then Steve waited, contemplated how he would go about mentioning what he had remembered down at the pond. He disposed that there was no specific way to go about it, and spoke after a deep exhale.

“I wish I could tell you more about myself,” he began with, “but I can’t recall much.”

Tony turned to him fully at that, gave him a furrowed concern. “You can’t recall much? About _yourself?"_

“My memory’s full of gaps and blank spots. I don’t know why. Tony, I can’t even _remember_ why.”

Tony pursed his lips, then. “This is all pulling itself towards my earlier theory, you know. Unconscious tirades and bad memory are the _literal_ effects of the government’s deprave militant moulding.”

Steve breathed. “Down at the pond, before I went off, Peter had said a string of words, I think, and—“

“And you remembered something.” Tony placed his tool down, put the gauntlet hand on his hip. “Spill it, Rogers. I’m officially on a need-to-know basis.”

“You won’t believe me at first,” Steve started, and was hesitant. He breathed, looked at Tony with intent. “But it was a memory... of your father.”

And Tony couldn’t comprehend what had just been said in the moment, and so a gesture of recollection wasn’t even possible. Instead, he let the statement wash folds through his face, and he morphed from that of expectancy to weighted confusion. “My _father?”_

“It explains why you seem so familiar to me, and—”

“Hold on,” Tony said, brought his hands up. He meditated. “Are you one of the many wealthy sons of whom I’ve rejected friendship over the years?”

Steve did a double-take at the misdirection. “What?”

“Because, towards the dawn of my teenage years, I _definitely_ would have known who you were.”

At that, Steve took a stool nearby, sat on it in front of Tony with seriousness. “There was a desk, full of things.”

“Where?”

“In my vision. A name plate, too.” He stared at him, then, with great conviction. “It said _Stark_.”

"That could be anyone.” Tony tried mentally to conjure explanation. “An estranged cousin, you know, or—"

“Has your father ever worked someplace other than your family business?”

“No, Steve—"

"A teaching job? Something official?”

“I would’ve known, okay?” Tony said. He brought a knuckle down to the bench, let it hold him. “No.”

Steve rubbed his mouth. Both himself and Tony were in great thought, wondered deeply their relation and just _where_ their connective lie. It was inconceivable for Tony, especially, to believe it was by great chance that Steve happened to have involvement with his father. If verifiable, it could mean something heinous for everything Steve happened to be in that moment. The lack of memory. The _rage_.

It couldn’t be true. It _just_ wasn’t. Steve was marvelling within whatever false recollection he decided fit him best, and Tony knew it.

“Would you be able to do something for me?” The former had then asked, drew Tony back out of his pondering.

“What?”

“Could you phone him?”

Tony laughed almost. “Right now? Nope. Not happening.”

“But—"

“I can’t even call him on my own favour, Steve. On the basis of someone else’s? You’re dreaming.” Tony fiddled with some tools on the table, went quiet. “That man has no time for any venture that isn’t actively making him money.”

“Could you at least try?” Steve asked. He put his hand flat on the table next to the stool. “And if he doesn’t pick up, then so be it.”

Tony remained quiet.

“He's _just_ your father.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you actually knew him.”

Tony eyed Steve, and in the gesture he communicated almost fear in passioned eyes, glass eyes. The fear of the overlooked son. Steve could see it, chose to attack it.

“I’m right here,” he felt was appropriate to say; to reassure him. And it was true. Tony wasn’t alone, or grieved with the task of swallowing his father’s vexation with sole face. Steve was sitting there, going no where, and was awaiting promptly his courage in the matter. He bore no judgement; he didn’t know him well enough to form any.

Tony looked at him a second more. The honest worst Howard could do was hang up. Or yell. And then it would be in Tony’s choice to end the call if needed. Put the power in _his_ hands. And he hadn’t spoken to him since his discharge from hospital, so he guessed it was time.

From his pocket, Tony took the phone and dialled.

He put it to his ear, closed his eyes in waiting. Steve eyed him attentively, kept a calm composure so as to keep Tony balanced on whatever rocking, swaying horse his consternation had mounted.

“Dad,” Tony said at once, coughed almost, opened his eyes as the line came through.

“Mr. Stark?”

His demeanour slouched at the familiar British intonation. “Jarvis.”

“Are you alright? What’s happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all—"

“Are you certain? Because the—”

Steve raised his expression at the flurry of muted spiel that proceeded from the opposite end of the call. Tony nodded to the speech, kept his stare at Steve to show he was _really_ doing it. “ _Jarvis_ ,” he interrupted. “Could you pass the phone to Howard?”

Silence at the end of the line ensued. Tony sighed. “Please.”

“Your father requested he only be interrupted when it is urgent."

“Every time I call _is_ urgent.”

“Tony—"

“Please."

Jarvis paused again, this time in further deliberation. And, then, came a clearing of the throat. “One moment.”

Tony squeezed his face to the side, indicated to Steve that he was in anticipation. After a brief period, a stern voice pushed immediately through the small phone and into Tony’s ear, awaking in him a flash of tensity.

“This _better_ be good, son.”

At the emergence of his father’s voice, Tony felt with great strength cornered, though he was nowhere near the edge of the room. “Come on, Howard. Not even a _Hi, how've you been?”_ he asked, pretended his confidence. "Or, at least, a—"

“I don’t have time for this. Say what you need.”

Tony looked over at his peer in the exchange, who was still studying him patiently from atop the stool he sat at, and the lamps lit his blonde hair like a medallion. “Do you happen to know, by any chance, someone named Steve?”

“I know many Steves. You’re going to have to elaborate.”

“What about one _Steve Rogers?”_

Howard paused, and then exhaled. “No.”

“No?”

“The name isn’t familiar.”

Tony’s face questioned. “He says he knows you.”

“And a lot of people do. You should know this by now.” Then, he paused again. “Is this the only reason you called?”

“Not _necessarily_ , Dad, but—"

“Always wasting away my patience, aren’t you? _Always."_

And before Tony could continue with what ever else he felt like (which was something along the lines of _why haven’t you called to check on me, Dad?_ ) the line went dead.

He removed it from his ear promptly, stared at the call’s end on the screen. His subsequent breath trembled with humiliation. “ _Jesus Christ_."

Steve shook his head at the information he had managed to gather from listening. “That... _can’t_ be."

“Well, I’m not calling him again,” Tony said bluntly. He tossed his phone onto a soft nest of loose sheets towards the end of the table. “You can forget that.”

And when Steve looked up at him, in that moment, he saw for the first time in Tony the remnants of the rejected boy; there stood the broken-down son of the tech tycoon, confused by (though used to) the lack of care and warmth in the simplest of communication with his father. It was so uncomplicated an exchange, and yet it enunciated a large portion of the relationship they had: fractured, disappointing, _detached_. Even worse—though arisen was his empathy—Steve had failed to identify further familiarity in it all. If it wasn’t already adverse that Tony's father had declined his knowledge of him, Steve couldn’t remember anything more about him from that small exchange.

It seemed his memory was conditional. He decided that was it for the day.

There was _definitely_ something, however, being concealed among all of it. Steve needed to divulge what it was. For his own sake.

“Thank you for trying,” he then said.

Tony was distant, hands holding the lingering parts of his dignity at the edge of the table in support. The palm with the right beam pad did not, evidently, sit comfortable at the surface’s border. His heart was broken beneath the brace he wore, too. “Yeah, _well_.”

“Would you like me to go, now?”

Tony breathed, and he choked something down. “ _No_. Uh, you can stay. I mean, that’s what you usually do.”

“Alright.”

“If it’s too late, though, feel free to—“

“It’s not.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

And Tony tweaked his work a bit more, though no real progression came from the action. Steve sat there, like he always did. He chose not to speak until Tony indicated, which he did a moment or so later.

“I’m not a wuss, Rogers. My father’s just an ass.”

“I didn’t think you were,” Steve said. “A… _wuss."_

Tony squinted. “I wouldn’t want you to know him, anyway. I wouldn’t want _anyone_ to know him.”

They went quiet again. After a while, though Steve didn’t think himself good it, he tried to lighten the mood.

“You said before you passed off on friendships?”

Picking apart his emotional dispassion was a _great_ move.

“I said that?” Tony asked himself, pondered. “Huh. Guess I did.”

“Also that you’d _definitely_ remember if you knew me.” Steve crossed his arms, raised an eyebrow in a question he hoped was witty and indicative enough. “What’s, uh, _that_ supposed to mean?”

Tony face eased up. “Sounds like you’ve got a bit of a selective memory under your own personal bias, there.”

“Hey, it was a few minutes ago,” Steve said, shrugged his large shoulders.

Tony picked up a different tool, had more vigour in his posture then. “Guess it just means you’re not my type,” he said with nonchalance, “of friend.”

At the sheer incredulity of it, Steve had to squander an emerging grin. “And so you’d _remember_ me for the sole reason that we’d be incompatible?”

“Well, I don’t spend my time, usually, around cadets with towering jock figures. I think I’d know.”

Steve laughed lightly. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Tony played around adjusting something, squinted at a thought that came through his mind. He didn’t look at the other boy, though he ruminated. “What about you?”

“Me?"

“What’s your type?” Tony asked. Then, he flashed at him a look of clarity. “Of _friend._ "

Steve contemplated that with great sincerity, tried to picture something. Someone. “To be honest, I wouldn’t know.”

“Ah, that’s right. The old fog.” Tony raised his eyebrows at the activity in his hands that ensued. “Looks like _I’m_ your type now. I mean, with due consideration that _I_ was your first friend here. I think I deserve that.”

And Steve now felt he was properly displaced in the comfort of alliance, finally, and could not contain his contentment. He shook his head at the remark, put his head down and focus elsewhere to choke out the enjoyable _satisfaction_ he felt taking half of his usually-astute face. Tony, too, had his stare placed unmoving on the contents on his table to hide the effect (again) of his vulnerability, but this time it was a good weakness. A good defencelessness. A guard down; _a smile_. He hadn’t cracked jokes of the sort with anyone since Bruce, and Steve and himself had been on an otherwise awkward basis until, visibly, that moment.

For the first time in a while, both of them felt pleasant, irrespective of whatever was going on with the both of them personally.

They were friends. Tony had said it. And, coming from him, _that_ was important.

Steve couldn’t even remember the last time he had one.

~ ~ ~

Coulson cleared his throat, examined the sheet he held in his hand. “It says _here_ the reason of discharge from your previous school was violence.” 

He stared earnestly, atop the paper, at the student sitting across from him. Under an odd shadow, by choice of the light from the window, he was almost hidden in a present darkness.

“Our school has a _no-tolerance_ stance on bullying, of any sort,” Coulson said. “You’ll be safe, completely, under our administration. That’s a promise.”

The student was dressed with the formality of a solider: a jacket of dark cargo resembling uniformity, and sharpness. He had hair placed in perfect side part, held Coulson in a hard frown that seemed permanent of his eyes. At the statement, he squinted. It was a flicker towards something stronger, something much deeper than whatever unsettle he already evoked at surface, and Coulson saw this immediately.

“Did it say, in particular, _who_ the recipient was in the situation?” The student asked.

Coulson breathed, tried to approach the situation with diligence. “Would I be wrong in assuming yourself? By the—"

“By my arm?”

And the student, sat unaffected by the insinuation (as though it bore no relevance), was missing his left arm. The space, nevertheless, was left respected by the adjustment of his jacket’s sleeve. In any manner, it did not dim his threat.

He quirked his eyebrow at Coulson for a moment. Then, he flattened it promptly to emphasise the gesture.

“Yeah,” he said simply. “You’d be wrong.”


End file.
